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THE BOOK OF 

PHILADELPHIA 



By 
ROBERT SHACKLETON 

Jtiikor of "The Book of Boston," "The Book of New York," 
"Unvisited Places of Old Europe," etc. 




Illustrated with Photographs 
and with drawings hy R. L. BOYER 

and Herbert Pullinger 



THE PENN PUBLISHING 
COMPANY PHILADELPHIA 

1918 



COPYRIGHT 
19 18 BY 
THE PENN 
PUBLISHING 
COMPANY 




JAN 



!q;q 



The Book of Philadelphia 



©Ci.Ar)089'rv 



TO 
HAMPTON L. CARSON 

A PHILADELPHIAN 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Insideks and Outsiders 1 

II The Hidden Churches 14 

III Within a Nooked Courtyard 32 

IV The City of Franklin 40 

V The State House 62 

VI The Hall of an Ancient Guild .... 81 

VII Quakers and Meeting-Houses 93 

VIII Old Sections op the City Ill 

IX Streets and Ways 128 

X Romantic Business 150 

XI Art and Artists 163 

XII Some Actors and Authors 179 

XIII The Place of Clubs 201 

XIV A City of the Classic 218 

XV From City Hall to IMemorial Hall . . . 230 

XVI The Fair Mansions of Fairmount . . . 246 

XVII A College Town Within the City . . . 260 

XVIII Some Distinguishing Traits 272 

XIX The Battle Street of a Village .... 288 

XX Out the Old York Road 305 

XXI The Wayne Line 321 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XXII The Three B 's op the Riverside .... 332 

XXIII EoMANCE IN Towns to the Southward . . 344 

XXIV Valley Forge 354 

XXV As Far as York and Lancaster . . . .366 

XXVI Some Benefactions, Old and New . . . 376 

XXVII South of Market Street 386 

XXVIII Feudal City 397 



ILLUSTEATIONS 



PAGE 



The Hall of the Declaration Frontispiece 

At Broad and Chestnut Streets . . . (heading) 1 

Franklin's Statue (initial) 1 

The Broad Street Vista (facing) 12 

Three Arches in Supreme Court Room . (tailpiece) 13 

A Bit of St. Peter's (initial) 14 

Aristocratic St. Peter's (facing 22 

Christ Church (tailpiece) 31 

St. Joseph's Tower (initial) 32 

William Penn's Chair (tailpiece) . 40 

Franklin's Electrical Apparatus . . . (initial) 41 

Franklin's Grave (tailpiece) 61 

The Syng Silver (initial) 62 

The Old State House (facing) 64 

The Court Room in the Old State House . (facing) 72 

The Finest Stairs in America .... (tailpiece) 80 

Carpenters' Hall (initial) 81 

The Custom House (tailpiece) 92 

The Penn Treaty Monument .... (initial) 93 

The Old Meeting House on Arch Street . (facing) 96 

A Peaceful Quaker Courtyard . . . (tailpiece) 110 

An Iron Railing (initial) 111 

One of the Ancient Alleys (tailpiece) 127 

The Palladian Window: State House . (initial) 128 

Residential Rittenhouse Square . . . (facing) 140 

Old Mansions on Rittenhouse Square . . (tailpiece) 149 

Doorway: Philadelphia Contributionship (initial) 150 

The Old Stock Exchange (facing) 156 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



The Ancient Black Horse Inn .... 

Fire Signs 

Academy of The Fine Arts .... 

School of Industrial Arts 

Franklin's Sword 

The Academy of Music 

Gateway of The Acorn Club .... 

The Street of Little Clubs 

The Franklin Inn 

The Philadelphia Club 

The Franklin Institute 

Andalusia 

The Classic Portico of the Old Girard 

Bank 

Girard College 

Memorial Hall 

The Classic Temples of the Old Water 
Works 

On the Parkway 

The Letitia House 

The Home of Benedict Arnold .... 

Arch over the Wissahickon 

Archway into Quadrangle 

The Memorial Tower 

Fountain in Rittenhouse Square . 

The United States Mint 

Washington's Garden 

Stenton: An Honored Mansion . 
The Chew House: Germantown . 
Washington's Germantown Home . 

An 0]d Doorway 

Paneling at Graeme Park 

The John Bartram House ..... 
St. David's: The Burial Place of An- 
thony Wayne 



(facing) 


I'AGE 

160 


(tailpiece) 


162 


(initial) 


163 


(tailpiece) 


178 


(initial) 


179 


(tailpiece) 


200 


(initial) 


201 


(facing) 


208 


(facing) 


214 


(tailpiece) 


217 


(initial) 


218 


(facing) 


220 


(facing) 


228 


(tailpiece) 


229 


(initial) 


230 


(facing) 


240 


(tailpiece) 


245 


(initial) 


246 


(facing) 


254 


(tailpiece) 


259 


(initial) 


260 


(tailpiece) 


271 


(initial) 


272 


(tailpiece) 


287 


(initial) 


288 


(facing) 


292 


(facing) 


302 


(tailpiece) 


304 


(initial) 


305 


(tailpiece) 


320 


(initial) 


321 


(facing) 


328 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

On the Schuylkill (tailpiece) 331 

Garden House, Bonaparte Park: Bor- 

dentown (initial) 332 

Gateway to Bonaparte Park .... (tailpiece) 343 

Naaman's-on-the-Delaware (initial) 344 

Doorway of Newcastle Church .... (tailpiece) 353 

Washington Memorial: Valley Forge . (initial) 354 

Washington's Headquarters .... (tailpiece) 365 

A Bethlehem Belfry (initial) 366 

Mennonite Street Market: Lancaster . (tailpiece) 375 

Drexel Institute (initial) 376 

The Stately Old Pennsylvania Hospital . (facing) 378 

The Ridgway Library (tailpiece) 385 

An Old Foot-scraper (initial) 386 

The Quiet Living of Philadelphia . . . (facing) 390 

Steps of the Nicholas Biddle House . . (tailpiece) 396 

Barye's Bronze Lion (initial) 397 

Interior Doorway in State House . . . (tailpiece) 403 




■^^t,**' 



THE 
BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 



CHAPTER I 

INSIDEES AND OUTSIDERS 

HILADELPHIA is the City of 
Brotherly Love; but if you hope 
to receive a share of the brotherly 
affection it makes a great deal of 
difference whose brother you hap- 
pen to be. And, more than that, it is 
looked upon as of prime importance to 
know not only whose brother you are, 
but whose son or daughter, whose 
grandson or granddaughter you are, 
who were your great-grandparents, even who were 




THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

your great-great-grandparents. No other American 
city so coldly cuts its social cleavages; no other has 
raised and upheld such unbrotherly barriers. There 
are not only brothers — but others ! If one is outside 
of certain lines and circles of consanguinity, Phila- 
delphia is not the City of Brotherly Love but the City 
of Unbrotherly Indifference. 

All this would liave immensely surprised William 
Penn himself, who hoped so ardently for the growth 
of an actual Philadelphia as the capital of his Syl- 
vania. The city whose name meant fraternal affec- 
tion was to be in the midst of a smiling sylvan colony. 
But the English King gave the first touch of exclu- 
siveness to the new colony by his merry prefixing 
of Penn's own name to Sylvania, and neither the 
entreaties of Penn, which were laughed away, nor 
his offer of a bribe of twenty guineas to the under- 
secretary who engrossed the charter; a bribe which 
was refused by the wary clerk, who, though he loved 
money much, feared the Merry Monarch more ; could 
suffice to take away what Penn deemed the un- 
Quakerlike use of his own name; he deplored the 
un-Quakerlike appearance of personal vanity. 

In Philadelphia, family is a fetich. And yet, it is 
far more than a city of families. It is markedly a 
city of individuality, of individualities, a city of 
character and of characters; it is a city of a 
character which comes more from individuals than 
from families, intense though family worship is. In 
this frank doj3endence on individuals for its fame 
and progress, the city presents an odd contrast in 

2 



INSIDEES AND OUTSIDERS 

the deference which it at the same time so frankly 
yields to local lineage. 

And, strangest of all, for this City of Unbrotherly 
Indifference to outsiders and love for insiders, is 
the fact that its accepted leaders, its greatest men, 
have been frankly outsiders ! 

Penn himself was the first example. Being the 
founder, he could not well avoid being an outsider; 
but instead of making himself an insider, by 
taking up his permanent home here, or even by 
living here for many years or making frequent visits, 
his personal stay in the city and province of his 
founding was brief. 

William Penn had excellent grounds for that 
family vanity which is so marked a trait of the city 
he founded. His ancestors were not such as sat 
upon the remote edges and outskirts of history. 
One Penn was even so distinguished as to have much 
to do with that long-established English institution, 
the Saturday night bath, for, as barber to Henry the 
Eighth, from whose reign until well into that of 
Victoria the week-end bath was a fashion firmly 
fastened, he was expected always to be present and, 
as the old phrasing has come down, ''always use- 
ful." And he had his reward, for in a painting by 
Holbein representing a group of barber-surgeons re- 
ceiving a charter from King Henry, he is gravely 
prominent, as befits the barber of a king. 

William Penn's own father, who was very much 
the opposite of a Quaker, found a road to fame by 
becoming an admiral, gallant and capable, thus quite 

3 



THE BOOK OF PHILADEL ^HIA 

eclipsing, in the opinion of most of the English, his 
non-fighting son, who merely founded a great com- 
monwealth and a great city. 

In the beautiful Church of St. Mary Eedcliffe, in 
old Bristol, which Queen Elizabeth declared to be the 
fairest and goodliest parish church in England, I saw 
the monument of Admiral Penn, with his coat of 
arms and his armor set in impressive prominence 
on the wall, and with a lengthy laudatory inscription, 
naming title after title that he had won, and 
quaintly ending, that he had *'in much Peace arived 
and Ancord In his Last and Best Port.'' 

Very different is this proud monument in the 
beautiful old church from the monument to William 
Penn himself; yet the sweet austerity of William 
Penn's last resting place outdoes that ( " his father 
in impressiveness. For the founder of ' hiladelphia 
rests in an out of the way nook in rural England, 
a lonely spot called Jordans, where stands a tiny 
Quaker meeting-house, and his grave is marked only 
by a low-set stone, and all is peace and restfulness, 
and the honeysuckle, the fragrant stock, the white 
roses, grow close about the stone, and in the charm- 
ing austerity there is immense impressiveness. 

The family and the descendants of William Penn 
followed his example in not staying in Philadelphia, 
either living or dead, admirable city though from 
the first it has been. Of the thirteen children of 
Penn, seven by his first wife, she of the unexpectedly 
romantic name of Gulielma, often affectionately 
shortened by him to '*Guli," and six by his second, 

4 



INSIDERS AND OUTSIDERS 

Hannah Callowhill, a name retained in Philadelphia 
by unromantic Callowhill Street, only one was even 
born in America, his son John, and none was buried 
here. A later John, a grandson of William, and also 
governor, died here in 1795 and was buried in the 
cemetery of Christ Church ; but the body was shortly 
taken up and carried to England. 

By accepting perforce the prefix of "Penn" to the 
name of the colony, and by the effect of his own 
personality, Penn himself gave the note of individ- 
uality which has throughout the passing years 
marked the city. 

Over "■ ^r again one notices similitudes be- 
tween . lia and Boston, and curiously the 
two old e indeed alike, with the likeness de- 
pendent i oat degree upon the loyalty to family 
descent, j-jit in comparing the two cities, one may 
constantly -notice the contrast that it was families 
that made Boston, but individuals who made Phila- 
delphia. 

And again and again, once the fact is realized, one 
comes back to that curious fact that the greatest 
individuals of Philadelphia were not really of the 
city. Cold as Philadelphia is and has always been 
to outsiders, difficult as it is and has always been 
for outsiders to become affiliated — aphiladelphiated, 
so to speak — it is to outsiders, and not to insiders, 
that Philadelphia mainly owes her achievements and 
her prestige. 

Franklin, more than any other individual, repre- 
sents and characterizes Philadelphia; and Franklin 

5 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

dropped in quite casually from Boston, and quite 
without the backing of proud New England family 
connection. That his father was a pious and 
prudent man and his mother a discreet and virtuous 
woman, as he himself expressed it on the epitaph 
which he wrote for their monument, covered all that 
could be said on that score; and this was nothing 
at all from the viewpoint of family. 

Yet Philadelphia, like Boston, stands in extraor- 
dinary degree for the sense of respectability which 
lies in family permanence. 

Next to Franklin, no name is so closely associated 
with Philadelphia as that of Stephen Girard; and 
Girard was a native of France, whose Philadelphia 
advent was even more casual than that of Franklin; 
for with his ship he slipped into Philadelphia in a 
successful effort to escape English privateers, and, 
rather than go out to certain capture, stayed on, and 
became a great Philadelphia merchant. 

Robert Morris, the financier of the Eevolution, the 
great Philadelphian who financially saved the 
country, was English born, and Jay Cooke, the 
financier of the nation during the Rebellion, was an 
Ohio man. It is a curious similarity, in regard to 
these two outsiders who became so important, that 
each of them, after saving the nation financially, 
failed in his own finances and lost everything. And 
an unhappy dissimilarity is that although Jay Cooke 
happily rehabilitated himself financially, Morris, the 
greater man of the two, unhappily did not. 

Philadelphia has a university of work. Temple 

6 



INSIDERS AND OUTSIDERS 

University, whose students, coming from all parts of 
the country, have passed beyond one hundred 
thousand in number in the few decades of the uni- 
versity's existence; and the man who founded this 
university, Russell Conwell, founded also a great 
hospital, and a church which has greater seating 
capacity than any other Protestant church in the 
United States, and Sunday by Sunday he fills it ; and 
he has also made himself known as among the most 
popular of living lecturers, in thousands of lectures 
throughout the land; and this Philadelphian was 
born in a little hill town in Massachusetts! 

The two editors who have the distinction of win- 
ning, with their periodicals, probably the greatest 
and most widespread circulation, not only of Phila- 
delphia but of the world, Edward Bok and George 
Horace Lorimer, came to Philadelphia, the one from 
Holland by way of Brooklyn and the other from 
Kentucky by way of Chicago. 

Side by side with the fact that the greatest Phila- 
delphians, in accomplishment, were not born Phila- 
delphians, there has always gone a curious indiffer- 
ence to distinguished men, both that the city has 
had and that it might have had. It is curious that 
Philadelphia had the chance to have Phillips Brooks ; 
that in fact he was for a time a Philadelphian, being 
rector of Holy Trinity some half century ago; but 
his qualities were not sufficiently appreciated here, 
and New England got him back and made him a 
bishop. 

And there was another bishop that the Philadel- 

7 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

phians rejected who became the head of a very con- 
siderable corner elsewhere, Bishop Potter: for 
although she kept two Bishop Potters, who by the 
way, were both of them born in New York State, 
she let the other and greater Potter, Henry C. Potter, 
leave here and go to New York City to become a very 
distinguished bishop indeed. 

The indifference has extended to the point of not 
even claiming greatness that actually belongs to the 
city, if the city has not sufficiently cared for the man 
who did the deeds of greatness. The city is so de- 
lightfully sufficient unto itself that it has always be- 
lieved that it could afford to accept or ignore, just 
as it chanced to decide. 

There was Tom Paine. He was a Philadelphian 
when he did his greatest service for the country. 
Yet he is never claimed as Philadelphian; and this 
was not because he was a free-thinker in religion, 
for Stephen Girard was an avowed free-thinker, and 
Franklin was known to be essentially one. And, as 
usual, Paine was not a born Philadelphian. 

The way in which Tom Paine won high achieve- 
ment is in itself a fascinating story. 

An Englishman, he came to America late in 1774, 
armed with a letter of introduction from Franklin, 
who was then abroad. Within a few months oc- 
curred the battles of Lexington and Concord, and all 
that this meant to Paine at that time was, as he ex- 
pressed it in a letter, that it was very hard on him 
to have the country set on fire about his ears just as 
he was getting settled! But before the end of 1775 

8 



INSIDERS AND OUTSIDERS 

he was flaming with American enthusiasm. "I have 
always," writes this patriot of a few months' 
growth, **I have always considered the independ- 
ency of this continent an event which sooner or later 
must arrive." 

By the time he had been a year in America he 
was writing the brilliantly patriotic ** Common 
Sense," and it was published in January of 1776; 
not, however, to Paine 's financial advantage, for his 
publisher even managed to figure up a balance 
against him of 29 pounds, 12 shillings and one penny 
— and somehow that penny seems to stand for so 
much! 

Then Paine enlisted and took up his musket and 
marched and froze and fought and retreated and 
suffered with the other soldiers and in the intervals 
of his duty, at night around the scanty camp-fires, 
wrote the first part of the ''Crisis," and it was 
printed and sent out on the very eve of Washing- 
ton's attack at Trenton, and had great influence in 
heartening the handful of soldiers for the desperate 
attempt. "These are the times that try men's 
souls!" Such were the ringing opening words. 

Paine 's own account of the ** Crisis" is still pre- 
served. '*0n the eighth of December, 1776, I came 
to Philadelphia and, seeing the deplorable and mel- 
ancholy condition the people were in, afraid to speak 
and almost to think, the public presses stopped, and 
nothing in circulation but fears and falsehoods, I sat 
down, and in what may be called a passion of patriot- 
ism wrote the first number." 

9 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

What a city of glorified indifference, to be indiffer- 
ent to such Philadelphia achievements as these of 
Tom Paine ! And it is so typical. One finds it hard 
to believe, for Philadelphians have forgotten it or 
never write or speak of it, that General McClellan 
was born here, and the city is just as silent in regard 
to the fact that here was the birthplace of General 
Pemberton. Indeed, I think it likely that few Phila- 
delphians know that either of these famous generals 
was Philadelphia born. And the case of Pemberton 
was so positively bizarre. Born in this city, of old- 
time Quaker stock, educated at West Point and serv- 
ing in the Mexican War, a Northerner of Northern- 
ers, he nevertheless joined the Confederate army and 
was so trusted as to be given the command at Vicks- 
burg, which place, with his army, he surrendered to 
Grant. Exchanged, Pemberton once more threw 
himself into the fighting and was in command of 
Confederate artillery at Petersburg and Kichmond, 
again facing Grant up to the end. Then, after 
a while, this curious Philadelphia Quaker so 
felt the drawing charm of his city, that he yielded 
to it and crept unobtrusively back, and died at nearby 
Penllyn. 

The similarities, so often insisted upon, between 
Boston and Philadelphia, are not so noticeable as 
their differences. 

In Boston, not only is every Bostonian who won 
even a medium fame proudly remembered, but the 
house where he lived is remembered, and street ad- 
dresses and descriptions are scattered freely through 

10 



INSIDERS AND OUTSIDERS 

every book which treats of that city. But in Phila- 
delphia all this is different. The city takes a pride 
in forgetting its own people, except the outsiders 
who became insiders ! — and a perverse pride in for- 
getting where they lived. No Philadelphia book 
gives the names, or, if by some rare chance a few 
names are given, no mention whatever of the home is 
made. 

Did you ever hear of Kate Smith? *'Fate sought 
to conceal her by calling her Smith," as the poet 
sang. But nothing could long conceal this particular 
Kate Smith. She wrote the story of "Rebecca of 
Sunnybrook Farm." Yes; that story, with the most 
charming of young girl heroines, was written by 
Kate Smith of Philadelphia, though few knew she 
had been a Philadelphian. After a while she had left 
Philadelphia, and lived in California and Maine and 
New York, and incidentally developed a partiality 
for marrying into names holding within them the odd 
combination of "igg," such as Wiggin and Riggs. 
She was born in Philadelphia on September 28, in 
the year — but, well, never mind about the year! 
That is quite immaterial. Some people always stay 
young. 

Where was Henry George born? For, although 
the fact is forgotten, the great Single Taxer was born 
at 413 South Tenth Street. Where did Robert Mor- 
ris live? His unfinished *' Folly" is tauntingly re- 
membered, but his home is forgotten. 

Nay, you would ask in vain where lived the most 
famous Philadelphian of all, Benjamin Franklin, 

11 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

A few, a very few, could tell where was located the 
home that he built for himself after he had been 
for many years a Philadelphian, the home that was 
his when he died, but no one could tell you, with cer- 
tainty, where he lived and worked during the most 
important years of his life, the formative years, 
when he and his printing press were establishing 
their permanent place in the history of not only 
Philadelphia but of the world. Boston honors his 
birth-site, London his lodging place, Twyford his 
visiting place, Paris knows where he lived while at 
the French court, but Philadelphia has forgotten his 
working-place. 

And yet, it is not that Franklin has been neglected. 
Never was a man more profoundly honored, more 
deeply and ineradicably kept in mind, by any city. 
It is only that in this respect, as almost all other re- 
spects, Philadelphia is a city apart, a city of individ- 
uality, a city that is different, a city that must needs 
even forget or remember her distinguished ones, or 
forget or remember facts in regard to her dis- 
tinguished ones, according to a code and a practice 
of her own. 

Or, take Girard. It would be hard to find his home 
or the site of his home. But none the less he is 
honored and remembered. A beautiful old bank 
building, far down town, the first of the classic pil- 
lared fronts and worthy of its leadership, bears his 
name, and a superb new building planned by that 
great lover of architectural beauty, Stanford White, 
and put up within a few years at the busiest corner 

12 



INSIDERS AND OUTSIDEES 

of Philadelphia, bears his name, not through a con- 
nection with his estate, but to do honor to his 
memory. 







13 



CHAPTER II 



THE HIDDEN CHURCHES 




'''''^''''Si^>)SjEm''i'a^iMiia^!is:si!i^i^^ 



'NLIKE other old cities, 
Philadelphia hides her old 
churches. Boston sets her 
old churches out to be seen 
of all, in the heart of her 
^^. w^ir^v'"^^^!?'^ busiest section, where busi- 
ipjT&=?iS4i,:r,s5^*,ti^im; jjggg foii^ r^nd citizens of 

every kind, and all visitors 
to the city, see them per- 
force. New York sets her 
fine old Trinity and the still 
more ancient St. Paul's so prominently in the fore- 
front that all must needs see. Thus to the throngs 
of Broadway, of Tremont Street, of Washington 
Street, are displayed the fine preciousness of the 
fine old churches of the fine old time. But in this, 
as in other matters, Philadelphia is the city that is 
different ! 

Those who go down old-time Chestnut Street or 
Market Street or Walnut Street look in vain for any 
indication of long-past churchliness. And these are 
the three old streets along whicli goes the traffic of 
the present day. And this in a city which so prides 
herself on her churches and her churchliness! 

14 



THE HIDDEN CHURCHES 

And even when one learns where the old-time 
churches are to be found, it is a matter of difficulty 
for most Philadelphians and for all visitors to find 
them. They are in out of the way corners, with no 
far-seen upstanding spires that dominate or guide. 
Christ Church has a low spire that is hidden, and 
St. Peter's has a tall spire that is hidden, and Old 
Swedes has no spire at all and is even more hidden. 
And when it comes to St. Joseph's— but that is still 
another story! 

It is not that there has been any effort to hide the 
churches. There has never been persecution. The 
hiding has been unintentional. From the earliest 
days, Philadelphia has made welcome every kind of 
belief, and almost every kind of disbelief. Quakers, 
Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Eoman Catholics, 
Free Thinkers like Girard or Franklin but not quite 
the Free Thinker of the heedless outspokenness of 
Tom Paine, have been made free of the city. 

Far down town as it is, hidden in a part of the 
city where there is no longer either business or liv- 
ing; except, broadly speaking, for tenement dwellers 
who have seized upon old houses for their tenements ; 
in a part of the city that is now as distinct from 
social life as it is from business, although geographi- 
cally on the very borders of both, is old St. Peter's, 
and I mention this church first, because Philadel- 
phia is a city that is still governed, in essentials, by 
society, and St. Peter's is the society church. To be 
received as one of themselves by the members of 
St. Peter's is all that is necessary to show that one's 

15 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

standing is established; those who permittedly pass 
St. Peter's portal here, feel no qualms as to being 
permitted entrance through St. Peter's hereafter. 

There is no obvious reason why this should be a 
more aristocratic church than the still older Christ 
Church or the church on Eittenhouse Square which 
represents, more than any other of the modern 
churches, social leadership; but ''facts is facts and 
not to be drove," as I think it was Sairy Gamp who 
observed. The church is especially notable because 
it stands in its own graveyard; and this is seriously 
or half seriously given as one cause of its exclusive- 
ness. For it is not the habit of Philadelphia 
churches to stand in their own graveyards. Taking 
the general aspect of the city, the churches are grave- 
yardless almost to the extent of new cities of the 
West. 

Here and there is a church with a patch of graves 
about it, as, so unexpectedly, the Catholic church on 
13th Street between Market and Chestnut. But, 
broadly considered, it is a city without visible grave- 
yard evidences, except in the formal cemeteries. St. 
Peter's churchyard and that of old Swedes, where 
the graves are in open evidence, are almost hidden 
successfully away from the knowledge of all but 
those locally born. The Philadelphian must always 
have shared the Louis XIV dislike of seeing the 
place where he was to be buried. The graveyards 
and cemeteries, old and new, are mostly in remote 
places. The largest. Laurel Hill East, West, North 
and South, are so cleverly perched above park paths 

16 



THE HIDDEN CHURCHES 

and drives that they hold to their Schuylkill side 
without being in the city scene. Broad Street has 
no Trinity churchyard to point a moral to the busy 
Philadelphian ; no Granary graveyard looks out on 
happy Chestnut Street. Old Arch Street graveyard 
would be hidden were it not that the wall is cut for 
Franklin's grave to show. Is this perhaps an in- 
fluence of the Friends, whose graveyards are peace- 
ful spots and not for show? Even Woodlands is on 
a quiet road leading to Darby and is not a daily re- 
minder to many passers by. 

It does certainly add to the dignity of a church 
to be surrounded by rows of gravestones, for the 
general effect on the general eye and consciousness 
as well as on the personal pride of people who can 
walk into church past the gravestones of their an- 
cestors. 

Much more effective as St. Peter's Church is on 
account of its graveyard, that is not the only reason 
for its exclusiveness. After all, Swedes' Church is 
surrounded by its own graveyard. Old Christ 
Church found at an early day that it must secure 
burying space away from the immediate vicinity of 
the church, which was becoming hedged about by 
buildings, and thereupon established its graveyard 
in the large space at the corner of Arch and Fifth 
streets. 

The possession of a graveyard gives opportunity 
to add an interest to a church by the interest of the 
graves; and most interesting in the graveyard of 
St. Peter's is that of Decatur. When Stephen 

17 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

Decatur offered the toast, *'My country! May she 
be always right! But, right or wrong, my 
country!" he did not know that the words were to 
become one of the proud possessions of our country. 
For they express the sentiment of a right good fight- 
ing man; his not to reason why, his but to do and 
die. And it is odd that, after winning fame in the 
Tripoli fighting and in the War of 1812, and winning, 
in general belief, like that other hero of the 1812 war, 
Oliver Hazard Perry, the title of ''Commodore," 
although neither of those gallant men was rewarded 
by a thankful government with so high a title, De- 
catur should have died, not in battle but in a duel. 
Decatur attacked in words the conduct of another 
navy officer, James Barron, and, although Barron 
probably deserved to be attacked, he was the better 
shot, and so the career of the famous toast-maker 
ended in 1820, when he was but forty-one years of 
age. His grave is marked by a tall grooved column 
and on it is the declaration that his ''exploits in 
arms reflected the daring fictions of romance and 
chivalry." Beside this column is the low flat stone 
marking the grave of that other Stephen Decatur, 
likewise a right good fighting man of the navy, his 
father. 

And poor Parson Duche is buried here. He had 
rapidly arisen to high prominence as rector of Christ 
Church and St. Peter's, and had uttered such a 
prayer, before the Continental Congress, at the 
beginning of the Eevolution, as set him high in 
public love. But when there came the days of 

18 



THE HIDDEN CHUECHES 

Valley Forge and it seemed that only a miracle could 
save America, he gave up the cause for lost, and 
wrote Washington, advising him to make the best 
possible terms with Britain, while he was still able 
to negotiate at the head of an army. 

The people turned against him. He fled. And 
when, the war over, he crept back, his former assist- 
ant held the double pastorate and there was no place 
for Duche. His previous popularity, his prominent 
connections, his former friends — ^nothing availed 
him, and he lingered on till near the close of the 
century, and died, unhappy and unforgiven. 

St. Peter's Church is lengthwise on Pine Street, 
facing out across a great area of graves, many of 
them with the old table-top, toward Fourth Street, 
and backing close up to Third Street. It was built in 
1761, and was an offshoot of Christ Church, and for 
years they were under the same rectorship. Wash- 
ington, when his home was in Philadelphia, attended 
sometimes one, sometimes the other, and Pew 41 is 
here pointed out as his. 

It is a brick church, the brick being almost black 
with age; the building is of narrowish effect, with 
slim belfry tower, six stories in height, also of brick, 
surmounted by a narrowish wooden steeple which 
runs narrowly to a peak. Vines clamber freely up 
the front of the belfry tower to its very top, and the 
great graveyard is green with grass and sheltered 
by the greenery of trees. 

Inside, one notices at once how small it is. It is 
even smaller than Christ Church, which itself is 

19 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

small compared with the old churches of New York 
or Boston, but it is somewhat larger than the toy- 
like Old Swedes. 

The pews are square box-pews, said to be of cedar, 
and painted white; and the plainness of it all, the 
simplicity, the simple dignity, give a pleasant im- 
pression. 

It is notable through having its organ and altar 
at the eastern end and its pulpit, a lofty, narrow, 
sounding-boarded pulpit of white-painted cedar at 
the opposite end, thus compelling the rector to con- 
duct one portion of the service from one end of the 
church and the other portion from the other end, 
and consequently compelling the occupants of the 
square pews to sit facing in one direction during 
part of the service and to change to the other seat, 
to face the other way, for the other part, of the 
service. 

And Philadelphians love to tell that a young man 
who ia time became one of the most prominent busi- 
ness men, was so attentive to a young woman of the 
St. Peter's set, whom he afterwards married, that 
he even dared to go to her church to see her. It was 
his first visit to the church, and hoping to slip in 
quietly and unobserved, he tiptoed to the door. He 
stepped hesitatingly in — only to retreat ia panic be- 
cause every eye was fixed directly upon him, the 
congregation all facing his way; whereupon he 
quietly slipped to the other end, and this time entered 
boldly, when what was his consternation to find that, 
the rector, preceded by the verger, having duly 

20 



THE HIDDEN CHUECHES 

paced the church's length, the congregation had all 
turned and again all faced him! 

To St. Peter's are ascribed two stories which have 
spread from Philadelphia and have been applied to 
exclusive churches here or there throughout the 
country. But it is a pity to take such tales from 
their original habitat. 

One is of the society leader who, having it pointed 
out to her by the rector, that she really ought to 
call upon and thus recognize a newcomer, still de- 
murred. *'But you will have to meet her in 
Heaven!" he exclaimed. To which came the swift 
retort, *' Heaven will be quite soon enough!" And 
the other tale is of the woman who, dying, was leav- 
ing a life throughout every day of which every social 
duty had been punctiliously performed. *' Don't 
ask my friends to my funeral," she whispered, to 
her grief-stricken husband, ** because I could not re- 
turn their calls!" And such stories are illustra- 
tive. 

Between Market and Arch streets, in the heart of 
a region of three-storied business in buildings of 
reddish or grayish or brownish brick and where, in 
a permeative odor of coffee and spice, there is still 
a good deal of business carried on, is old Christ 
Church, facing toward Second Street its niched and 
entablatured front. 

It is a church which shows exquisitely what 
triumphs may be attained in brick work; and the 
sober red, dulled and darkened by the years, is 
dotted with black headers. There are many 

21 



THE BOOK OP PHILADELPHIA 

windows, all curve-topped. The roof is heavily 
balustered with white-painted pine, dulled by age to 
gray, with urns holding torches of carved flame. 
And fine architectural effects have been obtained 
around the windows and the doors and in the heavy 
projective line dividing the two rows of windows. 
A brick belfry, topped by a spire of white, rises 
square and sturdy above the level of the roof, and 
then continues its charming rise in diminishing 
gradations of wood; rising at first four-sided, then 
eight-sided, then in a spire narrowing to a point and 
to a weathervane. 

But if you fancy that perhaps there is somewhat 
of overdone detail, it is possibly not altogether 
fancy. Not many years ago there was a fire; and 
the insurance company, under its policy, chose to re- 
construct many parts and did it admirably, follow- 
ing original designs. But there were some changes ; 
the urns on the roof, for example, being of concrete- 
filled metal instead of the perilous-for-fire white 
pine of the original structure. 

In the brick pavement close about the church one 
notices a few gravestones ; and in particular, here is 
the grave of James Wilson, a Signer of the Declara- 
tion, a signer of the Constitution, the first chief jus- 
tice of the State, a man of great consideration in 
his day. 

And there are a number of flat tombstones in the 
aisles of the church, indoors, reminding one of the 
French marquis who at gi'eat expense bought the 
right to be buried upright within one of the pillars 

22 




ARISTOCRATIC ST. PETER S 



THE HIDDEN CHURCHES 

of the cathedral of his town, so that, as he expressed 
it, people would not be walking over his stomach for 
centuries. 

Since the time of the Eevolution the pews have 
been torn out and replaced; they are now low, in- 
stead of high; therefore there is not such interest 
as there might have been in knowing that President 
Washington sat in Pew 58 and Betsey Ross in 12, 
that Franklin's pew was 70 and that of the author 
of ''Hail Columbia!" was 65; and yet you may at 
least see in what part of the church these celebrities 
sat; where George and Martha sat and after them 
John and Abigail Adams. 

Dr. John Kearsley, a vestryman, was the archi- 
tect, and Philadelphians like to point out, that this 
church and Independence Hall, the two most dis- 
tinguished old-time buildings of the city, are to be 
credited to law and medicine, John Kearsley design- 
ing one and a lawyer, Judge Hamilton, also of the 
same vestry, the other: assuredly a most curious 
fact. 

The general aspect of the interior is simple and 
admirable; a smallish interior, too; with panel- 
fronted galleries, with three white fluted pillars on 
either side, with bow-front organ-loft with square- 
edged pillars at the corners in front, with brass 
chandelier pendent in the center — a chandelier for 
candles, which has hung here since 1749, — a wine- 
glass pulpit, set so far forward as to give a sense 
of intimacy between preacher and people, a 
Palladian window behind the altar (Philadelphia 

23 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

loved Palladian windows!); and there is much of 
new stained glass that in time will take on the 
precious softening which comes with age. 

The chime of eight bells — ''Distant and soft on 
her ear fell the chimes from the belfry of Christ 
Church" — dates from the middle of the 1700 's. 
These bells echoed the sound when the Liberty Bell 
rang forth its peal, and when the Liberty Bell was 
carried from the city to avoid falling into the hands 
of the British, these bells also were taken, and all 
remained in AUentown until after the British went 
away. 

The custom has now come in of ringing these 
church bells at noontime; ringing national anthems; 
a patriotic sounding forth! — and, with our entry 
into the great war, a beautifully expressed invita- 
tion was set, at the door, to enter and pray for our 
country, our soldiers, our allies, our churches, the 
wounded and the dying and those who mourn, and 
for *'a just and lasting peace." 

Ancient records of the church are still preserved; 
with such fascinating items as one which directed a 
ringing of the bells on the occasion of the passing 
of Washington through the city. And there are 
items of expense, of over two centuries ago, still to 
be picked out of the ancient books, such as, *'A poor 
man's grave, 6 s."; ''Mending the minister's fence, 
8 s."; "A lock for the church door, 12 s."; "A cord 
of wood, 10 s." To bury a poor man, one notices, 
cost only half as much as to put a lock on the church 
door. 

24 



THE HIDDEN CHUECHES 

Among its ancient treasures Christ Cliurch 
preciously preserves its old silver, flagons and 
patens, chalices and plates, thin and delicate and 
light, in accord with the traditions of old-time 
artisanship; several of them given by Queen Anne, 
who so interested herself in sending silver to the 
early churches of these early English colonies, and 
thus materially tending to give fine remembrance to 
her name and fame here in America. 

Set within a slender stone paved patch on either 
side, shut in by iron fencing, with shrubs and small- 
ish trees standing close, within the open spaces, 
there is a pleasantly leafy aspect, in leaf-time, with 
pleasant tilleul-like surroundings. 

Washington used to come out, after service, be- 
tween the brick pillars, topped by stone balls, under- 
neath the beautiful arching wrought-iron which sur- 
mounts the iron gates; the only wrought-iron gate 
and arch that I remember, in America, of anything 
like equal beauty, except the gate and arch of ancient 
Westover, on the James. Washington's coach was 
generally drawn by two horses, fine Virginia bays 
with long ** switch" tails; but not infrequently there 
were four horses, and on rare occasions there were 
six, with postillions and outriders. His coach at 
Christ Church entrance gate always drew an expect- 
ant group. And it is not to be forgotten that he 
frequently wore, to church, a rich blue Spanish 
cloak, faced with red silk velvet. 

At this gateway I noticed, the other day, a large- 
lettered invitation which to the literal minded would 

25 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

seem to be a request to proselytize among the 
Quakers, for with a delightfully unconscious humor it 
read, ''Come in and Bring a Friend." 

Here, beside the church, lies the body of that un- 
quiet spirit, General Charles Lee, who, passionate 
and violent as he was, was for once in his impetuous 
life awed by a passion greater than his own, that of 
Washington when he met him retreating at Mon- 
mouth. Lee died suddenly in Philadelphia just be- 
fore the war came to its end. He had strongly ex- 
pressed the wish that his bones should not be placed 
in any church or churchyard, or within a mile of any 
Presbyterian or Anabaptist meeting house. The 
Episcopalians were willing to assume charge of his 
body, and in disregard of his wish, it was buried at 
the outside edge of the churchyard. It is still told 
in Scotland, as a pleasant winter evening's tale, that 
when a husband buried his wife in a graveyard 
where, so she had solemnly told him, she would not 
be able to rest, he none the less placed her there, 
explaining to the neighbors that if she could not 
rest he would take her away. Such reasoning seems 
to have influenced those who buried Lee in a church- 
yard against his will, and for three quarters of a 
century he quietly rested there. Then the alley be- 
side the church was widened, the coffin of Lee was 
found and was buried near the south wall of the 
church. 

It was two hundred years ago that Christ Church 
bought its large plot of ground for burials at the 
corner of Arch and Fifth streets. The area is 

26 



THE HIDDEN CHURCHES 

thick-crowded with gravestones and monuments. 
Numerous trees and much of grass give restfulness. 
The graveyard is enclosed within an old brick wall, 
eight feet in height ; and at the northwest corner of 
the graveyard, close to the junction of the two 
streets, the wall has been taken down for a little 
space, and iron pickets set there; and, looking in, 
there may be seen the grave of Benjamin Franklin, 
market by a flat stone. In his will he gave explicit 
directions as to this. He was to be buried beside 
his wife, under a marble stone, six feet by four, plain 
except for a small molding around the upper edge, 
and with the inscription, *' Benjamin and Deborah 
Franklin, 178- ": all of which was followed, except 
that unexpected longevity necessitated the change to 
*'1790." 

This graveyard is notable, too, for the famous 
men of the navy who are buried here. Here lies that 
Commodore Truxtun, who so gallantly captured the 
swiftest and the biggest ship of the French in the 
course of our misunderstanding of 1799 and 1800; 
here lies Bainbridge, whose services were mostly in 
connection with the Mediterranean pirates and who 
lost his ship to them; here lies the distinguished 
Commodore Dale, who as a young man served under 
Paul Jones on the Bon Homme Richard, and was 
the first of the gallant Americans to get aboard the 
SerapisI 

The present Christ Church building was com- 
pleted about 1750 ; but the land had been purchased, 
and the congregation founded, and the earliest 

27 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

church begun under its present name, as far back 
as 1695, thus making it, in foundation, almost as old 
as the first organization of the Quakers themselves. 
But it is not so old as the church of the Swedes nor 
is it so well hidden as the Swedes. Indeed, even 
after you have been directed to the Swedes, and have 
reached the general neighborhood where you know 
it must be, you look in vain for it, you probably pass 
beyond it, and helplessly ask again. It is only 
skilled street pilots who can find the hidden old church 
at all! 

The Old Swedes Church goes back in inception to 
the time of the Thirty Years' War. How long ago 
that seems! And the Swedes themselves always 
loved to point out that the inception came from the 
great hero of that war, Gustavus Adolphus. And 
that king not only busied himself with plans for 
Delaware River colonization while the great Thirty 
Years' struggle was in progress, but only a few days 
before his death, at the great battle of Liitzen, he 
warmly urged the scheme anew. 

The Swedes were in Philadelphia before the com- 
ing of William Penn; even before the granting of a 
charter to Penn. And this old church, Gloria Dei, 
was built in 1700, on the site of a block-house in 
which services had for years been held. In the 
1630 's some Swedes actually came to the Delaware 
River region to settle, and in the fifties and sixties 
they carried on contests and disputes with the Dutch 
and with the English. There exists a pleasant 
homely tradition of their having trained beaver who 

28 



THE HIDDEN CHUECHES 

fished for them and laid the fish on their cottage 
doorsteps, and another tradition of a wonderful 
pear tree which bore little sweet pears many years 
after the Swede who planted it was gone and which 
was the family tree of all the delicious Seckel pears 
of to-day. 

When Penn arrived in Philadelphia, he found 
three brothers Swanson settled not far from his 
landing place, and, rather than insist on his rights 
under his English charter he bought their claims, 
and their name is still kept in the memory by Swan- 
son Street, on which street, near Christian, stands 
this ancient church. 

It is by the waterside, and is approached, from 
the center of the city, through a region of square 
after square of misery, of squalor, of wrecked and 
dilapidated little houses, of streets and little alleys 
and courts of decay and decadence, of dirt and 
dearth. It is a heartbreaking district; one of the 
numerous districts quite unknown to prosperous 
Philadelphians themselves, and lived in by a pov- 
erty-stricken class of foreigners, who have turned 
the homes of sea captains and clean-living mechanics 
into the poorest of tenements. Towards the river 
are railway tracks and wharves. 

The church sits in the midst of a little graveyard, 
with a little grass and a few trees, and among the 
stones is one to the memory of Wilson, the beloved 
ornithologist of a century or so ago, who begged that 
his body be laid here, so that he should forever lie 
in a silent, shadowed place, where birds should 

29 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

always sing above his grave; and in spite of the 
spreading hither of the city's close-built homes, the 
church is in a little oasis in a sad desert of barren 
living; and trees and birds are still there! 

But it is all as if it were a toy church, it is so little 
a building, so odd a building, so quaint and fascinat- 
ing and unexpected and curiosity-provoking a build- 
ing. And the two cherubim with collar-like wings, 
examples of early Swedish wood-carving, which look 
out at you, big-eyed, are themselves like toys, in the 
toylike environment. 

The church is of brick that is almost black with 
age and shimmery w^ith headers, and the heavy 
cornice and the windows and the belfry are of a 
grayish white. The building has decided Norse sug- 
gestion, with its peaked gable over the entrance, sur- 
mounted by a tiny square wooden belfry, topped by 
a tiny narrow spire. The little interior has a bar- 
rel ceiling, with the lines of the beams showing 
through the plaster. 

Within barely half a mile from Old Swedes I came 
upon a busy sidewalk market, extending for square 
after square with unimaginable variety of goods and 
produce, wearable and eatable, in close juxtaposition ; 
with sour pickles next to cloth, pickled fish close to 
shoes, barrels of fish adjoining rolls of cotton, barrels 
and boxes of apples next to gaudy shirts, all piled on 
shelves or counters close against the front walls of 
the houses or little stores. It was a busy scene, for 
potential customers thronged by hundreds, even 
though for much of the distance the walking space 

30 



THE HIDDEN CHUECHES 

was so narrowed by the displays and by the buyers, 
that on what was left of the sidewalks it was often 
impossible to walk or to wade. 




31 



CHAPTER III 



WITHIN A NOOKED COUBTYAED 




"^^jk^ "^OT long ago I came -upon tlie 
^L trail of an interesting Ben- 

^L jamin West painting ; or, at 

^L least, a painting by West 
IpJL. ^ with an interesting history 
— and, after all, any paint- 
ing by West must needs be 
interesting, especially in 
this, his own city. 

The painting was of the 
Holy Family ; rather, it was 
supposed to be, because it 
represented a woman, in Biblical dress, giving a child 
a drink from a little bowl, while an old man stood 
behind and an angel hovered near in general watch- 
fulness. The painting had been given, so the story 
ran, to the Jesuits of Conshohocken, now a part of 
Philadelphia, but then a little town apart; and was 
turned over by the Jesuits to the Church of St. 
Joseph in Philadelphia, where for many years it 
hung behind the high altar, like so many Holy 
Families or Virgins in churches abroad. 

But one day it was discovered, or surmised, that 
the painting was not of the Holy Family, but of 

32 



WITHIN A NOOKED COURTYAED 

Hagar and Ishmael in the desert, and, as being in 
too conspicuous a place for such a subject, it was 
removed from above the altar and carried into the 
adjoining church-house. 

To the church-house I went, and asked to be shown 
the painting by Benjamin West; and somewhat of 
interest was awakened. But all trace or memory of 
the painting had vanished! New priests had come 
in ; no one had left any record of it ; the sexton was 
called into the consultation, as having had a service 
of more years than any of the present priesthood 
there, and somehow the legend or fact or memory 
was dimly evolved that, long ago, there was a 
superior who, finding that a number of paintings 
hung on the church-house walls, ordered them into 
some forgotten limbo, on the ground that they gave 
a darkened effect to the rooms! 

And there, at least for the present, the story ends. 
There is some possibility that the West painting may 
be found, tucked away with rubbish in garret or 
cellar. *'It would sell for a good deal of money, 
would it notl" I was asked, with a touch of wistful- 
ness; and, so continued the priestly querying, "This 
Benjamin West was a man of considerable standing 
in his day, was he not?" 

The Catholics, although tolerated in this city in 
early days, were looked upon even here with some- 
what of suspicious dislike, and although they did not 
try to hide their place of worship, they put it in an 
inconspicuous locality, thus trimming their sails to 
possible storms of persecution; and, following this 

33 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

unobtrusiveness, the church, through the close-build- 
ing-up of the city round about, has become positively 
obscure in its seclusion. Its location is like a dream 
from some story book. There could not be, in a 
crowded city, a more complete hiding away of a large 
buildmg. 

The church was built nearly two centuries ago and 
was rebuilt and enlarged a century ago. It stood 
here when the Acadians came, unhappy folk, four 
hundred and fifty-four of them — odd, that the precise 
number should be kept in remembrance! — unhappy 
banished folk, parents who did not know where their 
children had been taken, children who had been torn 
from their parents, husbands separated heartlessly 
from wives and wives who had been thrust away from 
their husbands, never more to see them. The 
Evangeline and Gabriel of the poet had very real 
prototypes. It is strange that the Acadian horror 
of 1755 should thus still echo here; and the fact has 
been remembered that the enforced Acadian pil- 
grims, cynically turned ashore here, were looked 
upon with dread by many a Philadelphian, through 
the idea that they might take the part of the French 
against the English ; though there need not have been 
much dread, as two-thirds of the four hundred and 
fifty-four heartbroken folk were women and children. 
One Philadelphian wrote that they were ''no better 
than so many scorpions in the bowels of the 
country ''; but the poor scorpions did not sting: — 
and later, when the Eevolution was impending, it was 
found that the Roman Catholics were, as a rule, on 

34 



WITHIN A NOOKED COURTYARD 

the side of the Colonies. They were given recogni- 
tion by the patriotic leaders, and on an October day 
of 1774 both Washington and John Adams risked 
criticism by attending service in this old church still 
standing here. Washington quietly enters in his 
diary "Went to St. Joseph's in the afternoon"; not 
expressing comment ; which, by the way, was in great 
degree his cautious custom; but John Adams, fresh 
from the outlook of Puritanism, was frankly shocked, 
and poured out his feelings in a letter to his wife. 
To him, "the poor wretches, fingering their beads, 
chanting Latin not a word of which they understood, 
crossing themselves, bowing and kneeling and genu- 
flecting," were, as he put it, "awful and affecting." 
That Lafayette also attended services here and 
Eochambeau and De Grasse and others of the French, 
was but part of the natural order of things. A build- 
ing that so many people discovered in the long ago, 
we should be able to find to-day, in spite of the hem- 
ming in by office buildings and warehouses; and so 
this is how the church is to be found. Begin by go- 
ing south on Third Street, past Walnut Street, to 
Willing 's Alley — one of the few alleys, if not the only 
one, still retaining the original designation of alley; 
for there was many an "alley" in early days, but a 
finical-minded generation has changed them into 
"streets." Turn down Willing 's Alley, to the west- 
ward, between tall warehouses, and you come to an 
iron-gated archway, on your right, which leads you 
through a building and into a nooked courtyard — 
and here, in this nooked and unsuspected corner, is 

35 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

the church! It is of brick, of dull yellow, further 
dulled by the passage of many years; and in one 
corner is the square campanile, almost Italian in ap- 
pearance, and of the dull yellow hue of the main body 
of the church. You are reminded of some Italian 
church on the Swiss side of the Italian border, rather 
than precisely of a church of Italy. It is far from 
beautiful. But it is of foreign aspect, and would 
provoke instant interest if happened upon by some 
strange chance instead of being sought for. 

The interior of the church is large and plain; the 
courtyard — enclosed by warehouses, the church, and 
the church-house — ^is paved with dull gray stone, 
where once was the graveyard of the church. Here, 
according to tradition, the body of Evangeline's 
Gabriel, the Gabriel of Longfellow's poem, was laid; 
for it was fittingly here in Philadelphia that the tale 
came to its end. For Evangeline, after years of 
wandering and with hope forever departed, came to 
this city, joined a sisterhood who cared for the sick, 
and in the yellow fever epidemic of the 1790 's found 
her Gabriel, in the moment of his death, in the alms- 
house. But not in the Quaker almshouse, as you will 
be told, with such an earnestness as would seem to 
befit Evangeline's being a real and not a fictitious 
woman! — not in the Quaker almshouse, which stood 
on the south side of Walnut Street above Third, but 
at the City Poorhouse, which was in the square en- 
closed by Third and Fourth and Spruce and Pine 
streets; this poorhouse being also a hospital. And 
although both almshouses have disappeared, the real 

36 



WITHIN A NOOKED COURTYAED 

Philadelphian, though he may be forgetful of much^ 
is anxious that you have correctly the details of the 
connection of Evangeline with his city. 

The imaginary Evangeline impressed herself 
locally far more deeply than have most of the actual 
distinguished folk of Philadelphia. She is more real 
than as if she were really real ! In fact, the story of 
Evangeline is taken with an amazing reality. Phila- 
delphia has out-Longfellowed Longfellow! For, al- 
though the poet, the creator of the imaginary hero- 
ine of the heartbreaking tale, distinctly and musically 
says that ''Side by side, in their nameless graves, the 
lovers are sleeping, under the humble walls of the 
little Catholic churchyard," Philadelphia still insists 
that Evangeline was not buried by the side of 
Gabriel, in the courtyard of this old St. Joseph's 
Church, but that her body was placed in a vault, 
given over to the sisterhood of which she was a mem- 
ber, of the Catholic Church of the Holy Trinity, at 
Sixth and Spruce streets, which, by the way, is not to 
be confounded with the Holy Trinity of Rittenhouse 
Square, which is Episcopalian. 

The Catholic Holy Trinity is itself of old-time 
foundation, though not so old as St. Joseph's, and it 
holds tombstones bearing even Spanish and French 
names, reminders of the long-ago frightened influx 
from the massacres of San Domingo. Holy Trinity 
was, so it is said, the last building to be erected in 
Philadelphia in the Philadelphia style of red and 
black bricks; and in a corner of the churchyard is 
the slab-covered vault wherein lies the supposititious 

37 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

Evangeline, with the actual Sisters. And the police- 
man on post is often approached by people who ask 
him to point out to them where Evangeline is buried ! 

Among the founders of the hidden-away St. 
Joseph ^s Church was an ancestor of one to whom we 
may refer as the wellknown Spanish general, George 
G-. Meade. For Meade, of our Army of the Potomac, 
was born in Cadiz ! But he was a very real Philadel- 
phian, none the less, and his parents merely hap- 
pened to be in Spain on account of the business in- 
terests of the father. Of an old Philadelphia family 
that was connected with St. Joseph's, educated in 
Philadelphia, married in Philadelphia, a general 
whose principal service was directing the great 
battle which turned back an invading army from 
Pennsylvania, he was throughout of Philadelphia 
spirit. 

He was a little more ostentatious, however, than 
the typical Philadelphian, and I think that his riding 
about, on a white horse, as many a Philadelphian still 
describes him, savored of the ostentatious. Born in 
the year of Waterloo, he may have associated the idea 
of Napoleon and Napoleon's white battle-horse with 
himself. And I recently noticed a war-time photo- 
graph which showed so many soldiers, with General 
Meade in the center, that it seemed of course that it 
must represent him at the head of his army; but a 
glance at the descriptive line beneath showed that it 
was merely a picture of the general and his staff. 

In what can only be termed a certain Philadelphian 
feeling, however, he was all Philadelphian; a feeling 

38 



WITHIN A NOOKED COURTYAED 

which holds within it a touch of envy toward the 
State and the City of New York and at the same 
time a profound sense of superiority; for I noticed, 
in his ' ' Memoirs, ' ' a letter of 1863, in which he said : 
*'I do not like General Hooker's entourage. Such 
gentlemen as Dan Sickles and Dan Butterworth are 
not the persons I should select as my intimates, how- 
ever worthy and superior they may be." One feels 
as if those words ought certainly to be italicized ; he 
doesn't like the New York officers ''however worthy 
and superior they may be!" 




39 



CHAPTEE IV 



THE CITY OF FRANKLIN 

HE idea that Franklin had of 
I gomg about Europe with 
George Wasliington, with the 
two traveling and sightseeing 
together, was one of the most 
fascinating suggestions ever 
made. 

That the two great Americans 
were personal friends is itself a 
pleasant thing to remember. And 
in 1780 peace seemed to be in sight. 
Whereupon Franklin wrote Wash- 
ington, from Europe, saying that when peace should 
come how happy he would be to meet Washington in 
Europe and accompany him, as he quaintly expressed 
it, *'in visiting some of its ancient and famous king- 
doms." 

I like to picture the two friends, wandering about 
together in the Paris of before the French Eevolu- 
tion, or floating together in a gondola in Venice, or 
together standing in Westminster Hall — for England 
honored both Washington and Franklin, in spite of 
their leadership in revolt. In Europe, so continues 

40 




THE CITY OF FEANKLIN 

Franklin's letter, '*You would know, and enjoy, what 
posterity will say of Washington. For a thousand 
leagues have nearly the same effect with a thousand 
years." But Washington could not arrange to go, 
and what would have been the most fascinating travel 
tour of history was not made. 

For one reason, such a tour, of two men together, 
would not have met Washington's ideas. A tour, to 
him, meant a tour with his wife also. Even during 
the Eevolution Martha was for much or most of the 
time in camp with him, and even at Valley Forge, 
her presence adding not only to the happiness of 
Washington and herself but adding much, also, to the 
good spirits of the officers and soldiers. But to Ben- 
jamin Franklin, the normal rule for travel was to 
leave his Deborah at home; and Deborah seems not 
to have objected to the years and years of loneliness 
that came from Benjamin's travels and his long 
periods of residence abroad. Franklin was a 
widower at the time he wrote his delightful sugges- 
tion to Washington, but even if his Deborah had still 
been alive it would not have occurred to him as either 
necessary or advisable to have her with him as a 
traveling companion. 

Deborah, his ''dear Debby," died in 1774, while 
he was on one of his European absences, and it seems 
that her end was saddened and even somewhat hast- 
ened by his absence. And thus ended the romance 
which began when Franklin, a poor lad, a stranger 
from Boston, walked for the first time on the streets 
of Philadelphia, and, eating one big roll and carrying 

41 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

another under his arm, found that a pretty girl was 
shyly laughing at him from the doorway of her home : 
the pretty girl to become in later years his wife 
Deborah. 

Her death at the beginning of the Revolution ex- 
plains why she figures in none of the diaries or ac- 
counts of Revolutionary days, when Philadelpliia 
was filled with important folk from the various 
Colonies. And, poor thing, she seems not to have 
risen with him, as he mounted; she seems always 
to have been a little awed by having a husband who 
had developed into one of the world's greatest men, 
and he always treated her with a sort of gentle toler- 
ance, and always with trustfulness. He left her in 
charge of the building and furnishing of the fine 
house that was to be their home in the evening of 
their days; and she attended to many things, and 
others she rather pathetically wrote him about, and 
others she left for his decision when he should re- 
turn. *'It was lucky for me that I had a wife as 
much disposed to industry and frugality as myself," 
he wrote. 

One finds her in sore tribulation over the adorn- 
ment of walls, the placing of furniture and the hang- 
ing of the pictures, fearing to displease her Ben- 
jamin, or to spoil the walls with nail holes in the 
wrong spots. And then she died. 

Nothing is more indicative of the confident energy 
of Franklin than the spirit in w^hich, the war at 
length over, he set himself to the completion of liis 
house plans, although he was at an age when most 

42 



THE CITY OF FRANKLIN 

men are thinking not at all of building on this earth. 
He writes in 1786, then 80 years old, of **a good 
many hands employed" and of making a long room 
for his library and instruments. The next year he 
writes, regarding his own dwelling and two other 
new houses beside it, that he has been busy with — 
what a list! — ** bricklayers, carpenters, stone-cutters, 
copper-smiths, painters, glaziers, lime-burners, tim- 
ber-merchants, carters and laborers." 

This house, representing the ambitions and ideas 
of his mature life, stood on Market Street (then 
known as High Street), between Third and Fourth. 
It did not, however, face toward Market Street but 
toward Chestnut ; it was built with the idea of being 
a Chestnut Street house ; but the deed given him for 
the land between his house and Chestnut Street was 
defective : — and it is odd to find one of the wisest men 
that ever lived, cheated in a real estate deal, and in 
his own city! Access to Chestnut Street being im- 
possible, the approach to the house was by a drive- 
way from Market. The house was torn down in 
1812, but the driveway was retained, and was long 
known as Franklin Court. Now Franklin Court has 
gone, and a narrow alley extends quite through, with 
the name of Orianna Street. Where the house stood, 
in the center of the block, is but a dismal-looking 
sort of place, with old warehouses and a few ancient 
little, shabby, dormer-windowed, oncewhile homes, 
•and with nothing to suggest the fine living of the 
past, or the home of a great man. 

At almost the close of his life, Franklin put up, 

43 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

on what is now Orianna Street, a rude building in 
which he housed a printing press; not for himself, 
except as a pastime, but for his grandson, Benjamin 
Franklin Bache. In the course of years the Aurora 
newspaper was regularly jorinted here, and when one 
Duane was in possession, Bache having turned the 
press over to him, there arrived one day, looking for 
work, a young man from Ireland, named James Wil- 
son; not James Wilson, the Signer, who is buried 
at .Christ Church, but one who through a descendant 
won far greater fame. And at the press that Frank- 
lin had left, in the little printing shop he had built, 
there went to work this young Irishman, who shortly 
afterward married a Scotch-Irish girl who had 
crossed the ocean on the same ship with him; and a 
grandson of these two is Woodrow Wilson, President 
of the United States. 

To add smaller things to great it may be men- 
tioned that it was in this now so dingy Oriaima 
Street that the elder James Gordon Bennett began 
his printing career. 

Franklin had what we should even now consider 
advanced ideas as to fireproofing his home. ''None 
of the wooden work of one room communicates with 
the wooden work of any other room ; and all the floors, 
and even the steps of the stairs, are plastered close 
to the boards, besides the plastering on the laths 
under the joints." And he thinks that as in Paris, it 
w^ould be still better if the staircases were of stone and 
the floors tiled, with the roofs either tiled or slated. 

The house must have been really a mansion. As 

44 



THE CITY OF FKANKLIN 

a matter of fact, Franklin had gradually become rich 
as well as influential; and a delightful touch as to 
this is in the story told by himself, of how he and his 
wife had begun their first gathering of china and 
silver, which was in their first home, and not in the 
mansion of which I am now writing. Franklin says 
that for a long time their domestic habits were so 
simple that his breakfast was only bread and milk, 
eaten out of a two-penny earthen porringer, with a 
pewter spoon; but that at length, one morning, he 
fomid a china bowl and a spoon of silver, and a wife 
who defiantly explained that she had paid three-and- 
twenty shillings for the articles, thinking that her 
husband deserved a silver spoon and a china bowl 
as well as any of his neighbors ! That was the first 
appearance of silver or china in the Franklin house- 
hold, but their possessions in these two branches 
** augmented gradually to several hundred pounds in 
value. ' ' 

It was a house of individuality. It was thirty-four 
feet square and three stories high, with three rooms 
on a floor. The east room was wainscoted below, 
with "frett cornish"; I quote from the description 
in an insurance policy for five hundred pounds, on 
the building, issued to Franklin in 1766, a document 
yellow with age; and the long-ago insurance man's 
spelling was not always what Franklin himself would 
have used. There was *'a rich chimney-piece," 
there were "fluted cullims and half pilasters, with in- 
tablatures," and in the description of the other 
rooms one finds wainscotes, pedestals and dentals, 

45 



.THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

a **cliimney-peice with tabernacle frame," with 
ramps and brackets and wainscoting along the stairs, 
and, outside, such things as *'two large painhouses 
with trusses" — supposedly meaning penthouses — 
and, delightful suggestion, **modilion eaves"! 
modilions, as all lovers of old-time architecture know, 
being something quite different from medallions. 

There were pictures in the house, as well as china 
and silver, and Mrs. Bache, Franklin's daughter, 
wrote him that, during the British occupancy of the 
city. Major Andre was among those billeted there 
and that, on leaving, he took away with him a por- 
trait of Franklin himself! Major-General Grey, of 
whose staff Andre was for a time a member, was 
likewise billeted at the Franklin home, and it is said 
that he, too, went off with a portrait, which long 
afterwards was sent back to the Franklin family by 
one of the general's descendants. 

Mrs. Bache, Franklin's extremely capable 
daughter, would nowadays be a leader of the Eed 
Cross. The Marquis de Chastellux extols her merits 
and tells of her as being at the head of a body of 
women who sewed and knitted for the soldiers ; she 
led him into a room and showed him twenty-two hun- 
dred shirts, just completed, each with the name upon 
it of the married or unmarried woman who had made 
it ; this being in the fiercely cold winter of 1780, and 
the shirts turning out to be of important practical 
value, keeping the soldiers in condition in the cam- 
paign that resulted in the capture of Cornwallis. 

Born in the reign of Queen Anne; the subject, in 

46 



THE CITY OF FRANKLIN 

turn, of four consecutive British sovereigns; Frank- 
lin exercised for many years of his eighty-four a far 
greater influence than did any of those sovereigns. 
And no man was ever so associated in so many im- 
portant ways with any city as was Franklin with 
Philadelphia. 

His power began with his printing press. 
Throughout his life he relied immensely upon the 
printed word to gain his ends. At the same time, 
no man was ever more successful than he in personal 
talk and persuasion, whether he was in discussion 
with a committee of the House of Commons in regard 
to America, or with a group of Philadelphians re- 
garding some matter of police or fire protection. 

But his printing press was his chief strength. It 
was a mighty power wielded by a mighty man. And 
where he and the press were located, in those early 
years when he was reaching toward higher and 
higher influence, was a fascinating question to me: 
a question which I supposed would be readily an- 
swered; and I was amazed to find no answer to it. 
Philadelphia had not cared to remember the location 
of so great a power. 

His home and his printing press, in the early years 
of his career, were in the same building, in accord- 
ance with the simple Philadelphia custom of the times. 

It has frequently been stated that the original and 
important printing-shop was on Second Street, close 
beside Christ Church, and a picture of a sort of rural 
English cottage with a business front is offered 
as a veritable pictorial presentation of the house j 

47 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

although as a matter of fact the picture was made, 
by the late Otto Bachcr, frankly as an ideal picture 
of an unknown building, for a book published a 
quarter of a century ago. 

In his ''Autobiography," Franklin intends to be 
explicit. He ''found a house to hire, near the 
market, and took it." This seems to have been in 
1728. Previously, he had worked for Keimer, a 
printer, on Second Street, and also had some deal- 
ings with William Bradford, a printer, on Second 
Street. But his venture into independence seems to 
have meant a venture into High Street (now 
Market). Books and pamphlets followed each other, 
from his press, with the address given "At the New 
Printing Office near the Market," but without nam- 
ing the street. A pamphlet on paper currency, the 
Psalms of David, the Pennsylvania Gazette, the 
world-famous Poor Richard's Almanac — all bear the 
tantalizing address, meant to describe and not to 
hide, but which only hides. 

When his wife's mother removed to his home after 
she became the Widow Eead, she continued her busi- 
ness under his roof, as is shown by the advertise- 
ment of her specialt}^, which was an ointment which 
had cured many, as she declared, and in fact never 
fails; it being an ointment for the itch; a "gally- 
pot" (delightful word!) cost two shillings, and there 
could be "not the least apprehension of danger, even 
to a sucking infant." 

But the value of this advertisement of Franklin's 
mother-in-law lies in its statement that she had "re- 

48 



THE CITY OF FRANKLIN 

moved from the upper end of Highstreet to the New 
Printing Office near the Market/' This, in the 
absence of definite evidence to the contrary, may be 
taken as sufficient proof that Franklin had located on 
High Street. For, had the Widow Eead moved from 
High Street to one of the cross streets she would 
have said so; she would not harve advertised as if 
she had removed from one location on High Street 
to another. 

One day, in the library that Franklin founded, I 
thought for a moment that I had discovered the de- 
sired knowledge; for in a manuscript headed, 
'* Franklin's Printing Office, No. (now) Market 
Street — ," with the number left blank, written by a 
Philadelphian in 1863, based, as he noted, upon in- 
formation from another Philadelphian of an older 
time, I found the deliberate statement that ''Frank- 
lin's old printing office was on the north side of 
Market Street, a few doors east of Second Street, 

now numbered ." There it was tantalizingly 

ended. Of course, it adds to the practical certainty 
of Market Street but omits the precise spot, which 
was to have been described in the manuscript when 
the street number should be learned. So that the 
man who was sure, more than half a century ago, 
that it was on Market Street, near Second, and not, 
as so many have supposed, on Second Street, felt 
a worried necessity to go and look it up — ^with un- 
satisfying results. 

With the idea that some old insurance policy might 
illuminate the subject I went on a policy quest, and 

49 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

safes containing ancient documents were courteously 
opened for me, but still I found nothing that could 
apply to that early printing-house. 

No fire insurance company was in existence in the 
early days of his business life, but he founded such 
a company years before he left these early quarters ; 
he organized the first fire-insurance company of 
America. Never was such an organizer, never such 
a man to be the first to think of a thing, to see its ad- 
vantages, to start it going. One wonders what Phila- 
delphia and America would have been without him! 

I found that, after this company was organized, 
Franklin took out policies on several houses which he 
had acquired on Market (High) Street, but that there 
was none on his printing office! In one house, in- 
sured for two hundred pounds, dwelt Daniel Swan, 
another, insured for one hundred and fifty pounds, 
was "where E. Hadock dwells," another was *' where 
Mary Jacob dwells." 

The explanation seems to be obvious. To begin 
with, Franklin rented premises for his work. That 
is in his own account. And as business and prosper- 
ity increased he remained at the same place, still a 
renter; buying now and then a house and lot as in- 
vestment but continuing himself to rent the combined 
house and shop where he worked and lived. Had 
he owned his place, he would certainly have insured 
it with his other properties, when insurance com- 
panies began, through his initiative, to be organized. 

And the rented building seems almost surely to 
have been on the north side of Market Street, just 

50 



THE CITY OF FRANKLIN 

east of Second. Nothing could more have surprised 
him than the fact that the location could so soon 
and so completely be forgotten. Why, it was some- 
thing that everybody knew! When the marvelous 
preacher Whitefield, who spent much of his time in 
America and in sailing back and forth thirteen times, 
between England and this continent, in an age when 
one crossing was no light task, was about to make 
one of his visits to Philadelphia, he wrote his friend 
Doctor Franklin as to where he could stay, as he 
had learned that Benezet, at whose house he had 
usually stayed, had moved out to Germantown. 
Whereupon Franklin responded: "You know my 
house. If you can make shift with its scanty accom- 
modations, you will be most heartily welcome." To 
which came Whitefield 's reply, expressing the hope 
that Franklin made the offer for Christ's sake; to 
which the forthright Benjamin answered, ''Don't let 
me be mistaken; it was not for Christ's sake, but for 
your sake." And Whitefield, no doubt with a 
chuckle of appreciation, accepted the invitation. 

Not far from Franklin's house, in the open air, 
at the junction of Market and Second streets. White- 
field delivered one of his famous outdoor sermons, 
and Franklin, who knew that it had been asserted 
that at some of his gatherings in England he had 
been heard by twenty-five thousand listeners, found 
to how great a distance he could move away and still 
hear the preacher, and then, by estimating the 
number of square feet mthin the space, allowing two 
square feet for each individual, he found that it 

51 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

would be possible for thirty thousand outdoor hear- 
ers to hear that marvelous voice. 

None knew better than Franklin that, broad though 
Philadelphia was in religious tolerance, she was not 
broad in irreligious tolerance; a distinction seldom 
made. Franklin was more irreligious than religious, 
but deemed it best not to insist on the unbelieving 
features. He took the religious test necessary to 
hold office, and he was associated with Christ Church; 
and he could genially say, in friendly talk or letters, 
that he did not believe in every particle of the Bible 
as inspired; for example, he could believe that Jael 
drove a tent peg into the head of Sisera, but not that 
such an act received the warm approval of the Angel 
of the Lord. 

When Whitefield came back from the South with a 
scheme of raising a great sum for Georgia orphans, 
Franklin doubted the good policy of the scheme. 
Then he went to listen to Whitefield 's public address 
urging contributions ; and with rueful amusement he 
tells that he had three kinds of money in his pocket, 
copper and silver and gold, but was determined not 
to give even a copper, but that Whitefield 's eloquence 
so moved him that he found himself handing over all 
the copper, and after a while all the silver, and before 
the address was concluded even the pieces of gold. 

In Europe, he made friends with the greatest. 
Even the first William Pitt came driving to his door. 
And always he was ready with the right word, to 
harmonize and control, or to resent in cleverness 
some attack on his country. At a dinner in Paris 

52 



THE CITY OF FEANKLIN 

shortly after the close of our Revolution the English 
ambassador, responding to the toast of "Great 
Britain," likened his nation to the sun, shedding 
beneficent rays upon all the world. Franklin, fol- 
lowing him, was to respond to the "United States"; 
but, he said, his own nation was still young, her 
career was to come; so, instead, he would give as 
a toast, "George Washington, — the Joshua who suc- 
cessfully commanded the sun to stand still." 

While the Revolution was in progress he wrote to 
his friend Priestley — the same Priestley, dis- 
tinguished as philosopher and scientist, who later, in 
the 1790 's, disappointed in England, came to America 
and made his home far up in the Susquehanna valley, 
in a region still distant and lonely even after all these 
decades; — he wrote to Priestley: 

"Tell our dear good friend, Mr. Price, who some- 
times has his doubts and despondencies about our 
firmness, that America is determined and unani- 
mous ; a very few Tories and placemen excepted, who 
will probably soon export themselves. Britain, at 
the expense of three millions, has killed one hundred 
and fifty Yankees this campaign, which is twenty 
thousand pounds a head; and at Bunker's Hill she 
gained a mile of ground, half of which she lost again 
by our taking post on Ploughed Hill. During the 
same time sixty thousand children have been born 
in America. From this data his mathematical head 
will easily calculate the time and expense necessary 
to kill us all, and conquer our whole country. ' ' 

Yet always and everywhere, he was the same 

53 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

simple, kindly unpretentious man. Manasseh Cutler, 
of Connecticut, and shortly to be of Ohio, went to see 
Franklin, armed with letters of introduction. He 
felt the same, as he afterwards wrote, as if about 
to be presented to some European monarch, and was 
prepared to let the conversation consist of merely 
answering such questions as the great Franklin 
should choose to ask. Imagine then, his surprise, at 
finding a man of unaffected simplicity, friendly and 
cordial, seated in his garden, on a grass plat, under 
a very large mulberry tree, a low-voiced man in plain 
Quaker dress, white-haired and partly bald. Tea 
was served beneath the mulberry tree, by Mrs. Bache, 
to Franklin and Cutler and several friends, and as it 
grew dark they all went into the house and the intel- 
ligent Cutler was pleased with the chance of thus see- 
ing the largest and finest private library in America. 

Cutler's reference to Franklin's Quaker dress 
brings to mind an advertisement which was inserted 
in a Philadelphia paper, half a century before this ; 
precisely forty-nine years before if one desires exact- 
ness. For Franklin's clothes had been stolen, and he 
advertised for them, describing the garments as 
** Broadcloth breeches lined with leather, sagathee 
coat lined with silk, and fine homespun linen shirts." 

Nothing ever daunted Franklin, no work was ever 
too hard for him. He takes over, when far on in 
years, near the end of his life, the Presidency of the 
State of Pennsylvania, such being the title in those 
days, and is elected and then reelected. He writes 
to the Duke de la Eochefoucauld in 1787 that he 

54 



THE CITY OF FEANKLIN 

has been elected, and says, with pardonable pride: 
'*0f seventy-four members in Council and Assembly, 
who voted by ballot, there was in my first election 
but one negative, beside my own ; and in the second, 
after a year's service, only my own.'* 

His energy, his spirit, were unconquerable. One 
cold day in a village in Normandy I saw a happy 
father walking beside a smiling nurse, carrying his 
first-born child to church to be baptized; and I was 
told that the child was Kut three or four hours old; 
and I thought I could understand how it was that the 
Normans had made themselves world rulers; and it 
also came to me that here likewise lay an explanation 
of the tireless endurance of that world conqueror of 
thought, Benjamin Franklin, for on a January day 
in bleak Boston he had been carried to the Old South 
Church to be baptized only four hours after his birth. 

Franklin founded the still-existent American 
Philosophical Society, he invented the Franklin 
stove, he founded the still-existent Pennsylvania 
Hospital, he was the first to utilize electricity, he was 
the leader in matters of street paving, fire protec- 
tion, matters many and important. Into everything 
that he created he breathed the breath of life. 

And it would astonish organizers of to-day to know 
that Franklin did not look for personal exploitation. 
He did not wish his name to be given. He did not 
even, as a rule, take part as the prinicipal director 
or the president. He made it part of his system 
to remain modestly in the background; he managed 
and controlled, but deemed it wise not to put him- 

55 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

self in the forefront as manager and controller. 
Yet everybody knew that he was. 

One of his foundations was that of the noble 
Library Company of Philadelphia. It came about 
through Franklin and his friends lending each other 
their books, and his seeing what would be the im- 
portance and benefit of an organized system. And 
so, in 1731, he organized a formal library. Its first 
books came in 1732 from England. Between 1731 
and 1742 eighty-five men signed the articles of in- 
corporation, and those of present-day Philadelphia 
who can possess ownership of one of the early shares 
by descent are proud indeed. 

The library began its existence on Pewter Platter 
Alley, a name long since *' improved" to Church 
Street. Franklin's enthusiasm was contagious. 
Books came freely in. James Logan willed his own 
large library, a valuable and precious collection, to 
the organization. Over in England, one day, while 
Benjamin West was painting a portrait of one 
Samuel Preston, who owned many bookish treasures, 
the painter looked around and said, "What do you 
intend to do with all your books I ' ' Preston did not 
know ; he had no children. ' ' Then send the books to the 
Philadelphia Library," said West; and Preston did! 

The library, after some movings, is now housed 
at Locust and Juniper streets, and a statue of Frank- 
lin in a toga, making him look very uncomfortable, 
is up in the gable. But within the library there is an 
atmosphere of scholarly quiet such as Franklin him- 
self would have loved. 

56 



THE CITY OF FEANKLIN 

Franklin was not only a creator of organizations 
and corporations that still live; he was also a seer 
and a prophet, a man of vision. Before even a single 
cabin was erected where the great city of Cleveland 
now stands, when there was no road but an Indian 
trail, and while the mouth of the Cuyahoga was but 
a sandbar, Franklin, from his study of conditions, 
pointed out the site of the future Cleveland as the 
place at which an important city was to arise. 

The crumpled face of Franklin, a face like a finely 
crumpled mask, was one that could literally mask 
his thoughts when he did not care to have them 
known. And one matter on which he was absolutely 
reticent was that of the identity of the mother of 
his son, William Franklin. 

His "Autobiography," one of the few great auto- 
biographies of the world, written largely in ''the 
sweet retreat of Twyf ord, ' ' in England, where he was 
the guest of the beloved Bishop Shipley of St. Asaph, 
in the bishop 's home — which I remember as a mellow 
building of Georgian brick, with its front charmingly 
covered with ivy and roses, at the edge of a prettily 
sedate village — does not give any intimation in re- 
gard to this mystery of his life. 

Even had the ''Autobiography" been published in 
full, as written, it is not likely that any hint would 
have been found. But any possibility of this sort 
was done away with by the grandson, "William 
Temple Franklin, to whose care Benjamin Franklin, 
by will, had committed the MS. for publication. 

William Franklin, Benjamin's son, died before his 

57 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

father. William Temple Franklin was William's 
son, and he postponed publication of the ''Auto- 
biography" for years, and is understood to have 
eliminated large sections, on account of pressure 
from certain people who did not wish revelations 
made, and he was certainly in receipt of large sums 
of unexplainable money from English sources. The 
thought is hopelessly tantalizing, of what precious 
chapters were destroyed, of how much of fascinating 
interest was thus lost to the world. 

The romance which early began between the youth- 
ful Benjamin Franklin and Deborah Eead was 
broken by temporary estrangement and by Ben- 
jamin's absence on a tentative trip to England. On 
his return, he seems then or shortly afterwards to 
have been the possessor of the unexplained William; 
and Deborah herself had meanwhile been having an 
unhappy matrimonial experiment; and the two, de- 
ciding to let bygones be bygones, married, and con- 
tinued their comfortable union into old age ; Deborah 
accepting the mysterious William as a member of 
the household. 

I have long thought, from various indications, that 
the mother of William was of a prominent English 
family. The youthful Benjamin had been on his first 
visit to England and he always had a taking way 
with him, with women as well as men. Modest as 
was his worldly position in his years of earliest man- 
hood, he had such looks and manners that he at- 
tracted the personal attention of Governor Keith of 
Pennsylvania and Governor Burnet of New York, 

58 



THE CITY OF FRANKLIN 

shortly before Ms first journey abroad, so there was 
nothing surprising in his having made friends and 
attracted special attention in England. 

In various ways one sees indications of some 
strong but hidden English influence. His son Wil- 
liam was entered at the English Inns of Court before 
leaving this country. When William received his 
appointment as Governor of New Jersey, it was not 
looked upon so much as an effort to win Franklin 
to the English as an appointment made on the per- 
sonal account of the son. And although Franklin 
himself was content to marry a young woman of low 
degree, from a society standpoint, he aimed high for 
William, and looked for an alliance for him with a 
relative of Governor Keith, and was angry with 
Keith for not accepting the suggestion : which doubt- 
less explains, at least in part, the bitterness which 
Franklin felt toward Keith, as expressed in his story 
of their relations in the ' ' Autobiography. ' ' And Wil- 
liam Franklin took tlie English side in the Revolution 
in spite of his father 's urgent appeals ; he knew some- 
thing, at least, of his birth, and deemed himself an 
Englishman. 

But if there was a love affair between the re- 
markable Benjamin and some one of high standing, 
William at least did not live up to romantic ideals, 
but married prosaically (his wife's monument is in 
old St. Paul's, on Broadway, in New York), and was 
prosaically imprisoned in Connecticut in the course 
of the Revolution, and then went into prosaic banish- 
ment, and prosaically died, after an interview with 

59 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

his father, in England, which failed to heal the gap 
between the two which had come with war. One is 
justified in wondering in regard to such a mystery 
concerning such a man as Benjamin Franklin. 

Chaucer, in his ''Franklin's Tale," has described 
a Franklin: a friend-maker, a sturdy, clearsighted 
man, a prosperous man and so hospitable a man that 
''it snowed in his house of meat and drink"; or to 
quote good old Chaucer more literally, his Franklin 
was "so gret a househaldere" that "it snewed in his 
hous of mete and drjTik." 

In spite of Franklin's remarkable association with 
Philadelphia, and the importance of his ideas and 
the impetus behind them, one always associates him 
also with England and France. He was the first 
American Citizen of the World. Even now no Phila- 
delphia home is properly set up if it does not possess 
a copy of the picture of "Franklin at the French 
Court"; a rather stilted matter, painted perhaps a 
half century after both Franklin and the French 
Court had vanished. 

Benjamin Franklin, gave much to France. Among 
other things he gave it both the motto and the name 
for a terrible Revolutionary hymn ; he gave it the in- 
spiration for ' ' Ca Ira. ' * For he frequently had used 
the two words, meaning "It will go, it will succeed," 
in reference to our own Revolution, and when the 
French so shortly afterwards came to a revolution of 
their own, they took his words and put them to ter- 
rible music. "Ca Ira!" they sang exultantly; and 
with the idea of revolution they associated the dread- 

60 



THE CITY OF FRANKLIN 

ful cry of the aristocrats and tlie lantern — ^the lan- 
tern, literally the lantern, in front of many a house, 
to which the aristocrats were dragged for death; 

'*Ah, ea ira, ca ira, ga ira! 
Les aristocrates a la lanterne!" 

When Franklin died, the National Assembly of 
France, on the motion of Mirabeau, seconded by 
Eochefoucanld and Lafayette, went into mourning 
for three days. 

When Jefferson went to represent the United 
States at Paris, Vergennes said to him, cordially: 
*'So you replace Dr. Franklin?" To which came the 
instant reply: *'No; no one could replace him; I 
only succeed him." 




CHAPTER V 



THE STATE HOUSE 




BUILDING of serenity and 
symmetry, of fine am- 
plitude, a gracious, al- 
luring building, rich 
in noble memories, 
yet touched also with 
a living sweetness; such 
is the beautiful old 
State House in Philadelphia, often referred to as In- 
dependence Hall. And it stood here, and was even 
then a building of age and dignity, when Sir Walter 
Scott said to Washington Irving, with a tolerant con- 
descension which he meant to be flattering, "The vast 
aboriginal trees that have sheltered the Indians be- 
fore the intrusion of the white man, are the monu- 
ments and antiquities of your country ! ' ' Scott was 
quite ignorant of the fact that America had archi- 
tecture; to him, our country had merely trees, 
although this building, and some other American 
buildings, were richer in beauty and in noble associ- 
ation than quite a number of those in his o^vn land 
of which he wrote with such enthusiasm. 

Scott was deeply impressed by the thought of our 
illimitable forests. He longed to see one, as Dickens 

62 



THE STATE HOUSE 

longed to see an American prairie. And had Scott 
come over here, and had he seen not only a forest 
but this State House, his imagination would have 
been fired, and he might have written a great novel 
about America, rich in details of the Revolutionary 
leaders, with the picturesque John Hancock, in 
scarlet coat and cocked hat with black cockade, enter- 
ing this building to preside at the Signing of the 
Declaration. 

The painting of the Signing, by Trumbull, is the 
formal artistic offering, by America, in regard to it ; 
the general effect is excellent, and the portraits are 
likenesses. It stands well up among historical paint- 
ings in general, including those of Europe, for a cer- 
tain stiffness of pose seems almost inseparable from 
historical paintings which show a large number of 
characters. 

And if one notices, in engravings of the painting, 
discrepancies as to various details and postures, this 
is not to be blamed upon the engravers, but is to be 
explained by the fact that Trumbull, finding that he 
had hit upon a good subject, made several replicas, 
with minor divergencies. The Trumbull Gallery at 
Yale has one of his Declarations ; there is one at the 
Hartford Athenaeum; there is one in the rotunda of 
the Capitol at Washington. Trumbull does not in any 
of the pictures show every one of the Signers, though 
he shows almost all of them in all; and he seems to 
have had some eliminative ill-will toward Caesar 
Rodney. 

Trumbull's "Declaration," with its rows of legs, 

63 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

was irreverently given the appellation of ''the shin- 
piece," supposedly by the sharp-witted Eandolph. 
And it is known that some peculiarly vicious flies 
from a neighboring livery stable caused great an- 
noyance to thin-hosed patriotic shins on the day of 
the final vote, and indeed that this hastened the mem- 
bers in voting in order that they might escape. 

Yet it should not be thought that on that famous 
July the Fourth the members, in formal dignity, 
one after another signed, making the signing a 
natural sequence to brave voting. 

In the first place, the fact that there was not a 
single adverse vote does not show that the vote was 
unanimously affirmative; for part of the Pennsyl 
vania delegation and the entire New York delegation 
refrained from voting at all. Not until July 15 did 
the delegates from New York decide to stand, for the 
Declaration, and not until after July 20, when other 
delegates were named in place of those who had re- 
fused to vote, was the Pennsylvania number com- 
plete. 

Nor was the Signing all done on one day, either 
July the Fourth or another! On July the Fourth, 
the supposed day of the signing, the Declaration was 
actually signed only by John Hancock, President of 
the Congress, and Charles Thompson, Secretary. 
And it was a brave thing for the somewhat dandified 
Hancock to do. He had fled in the middle of the 
night from the rough and ready fighting of Lexing- 
ton and Concord, but was ready to be the first to 
sign the document under which the leaders hazarded 

64 




THE STATE HOUSE 



THE STATE HOUSE 

their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor; 
he had fled from muskets but was valiantly willing 
to risk the losing of life and fortune if a formal 
arrest should be followed by a formal trial and by 
formal and public punishment. It was no mere jest 
when Benjamin Franklin remarked, "Well, gentle- 
men, if we do not, now, all hang together, we shall 
all hang separately!" 

Hancock was proud of his big signature. He was 
proud of his personal appearance as he sat in the 
chair of the President of the Congress. The chair 
is still here, in place in the hall where he presided. 
It is an armchair of mahogany, a Chippendale, the 
very king of Chippendales, rising to double height, 
as a presiding officer's chair ought to rise, with inter- 
laced and open-work back, and with a rayed sun, 
touched with gold, in the center of its bow-shaped 
top. Gorgeous dresser that Hancock was, he doubt- 
less had more than flitting thoughts as to which of his 
many suits would best become him should he be 
placed on his formal trial — should there ever be a 
trial ! 

For almost a month Hancock's name and that of 
the secretary were all that the Declaration bore and 
even these were signed over again, on the supposed 
July the Fourth document, when it was fittingly en- 
grossed on parchment. The name of George Wash- 
ington never appeared, for he had resigned his place 
as a member before the Declaration was presented, 
to assume, at the request of Congress, his place with 
the army as its commander ; a place of more personal 

65 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

danger than that of Hancock, for Washington was 
not only just as sure of the extremity of punishment 
if he were captured, but he was also in the physical 
danger that came from the operations of war. 

Most of the members formally signed this supposed 
Fourth of July document on August the second, but 
a few did not put down their names until still later. 

And how oddly some of the members signed! 
There was one ''William," but five who reduced it 
to "Wm." Huntington was "Samel." Hopkins 
was "Step." Lewis was "Frans." Stockton was 
"Richd." Rush signed "Benjamin," but two other 
Benjamins, Harrison and Franklin, signed "Benja." 
There was only one who spelled out "George," and 
four who signed it "Geo." 

"Charles Carroll of Carrollton," who signed 
thus lengthily so that, as he expressed it, King 
George should know which Charles Carroll it was, 
was one who, like part of the Pennsylvania delega- 
tion, was a member on August 2 but not on the 
momentous July 4. It meant something, too, Car- 
roll's saying this, for it is said that he added "of 
Carrollton" because of the fleer of some member 
that there were so many Carrolls that he might be 
safe! He was believed to be the wealthiest man in 
the Colonies. His property at the beginning of the 
Revolution was estimated at two million dollars. 
All this he risked ; yet he lived until 1832, to the age 
of 95, the last to survive of all the Signers. 

The hero of Delaware is Caesar Rodney, and an 
active earnest man he seems to have been. I am 

66 



THE STATE HOUSE 

glad to think that I possess a great fireside chair, 
fortunately chanced upon in Wilmington, years ago, 
which seems in almost certainty to have belonged to 
him ; a strong and dependable chair, like the depend- 
able Rodney himself. 

The people of Delaware honor him because of his 
having been a good citizen and a gallant of^cer, but 
more particularly because of a ride ; and two to\vns 
quarrel over the honor of its beginning! And the 
ride was a tremendously rapid and eager ride, made 
that he might get to Philadelphia to vote for the 
Declaration. The voting was by States, not in- 
dividuals. There were three members from Dela- 
ware. One favored the Declaration, one opposed it, 
Caesar Rodney, the third, was absent. It was vital 
that the vote of Delaware be recorded, so a messenger 
was hurried after Rodney, who was found some miles 
beyond Dover. He at once swung into his saddle 
and galloped eighty miles, reaching the State House 
and striding into the meeting hall at just the needed 
moment. 

It was a dramatic ride, and a tremendously 
dramatic scene. Yet, as with so much of picturesque 
Americanism, it has been wellnigh forgotten, except 
locally, because no novelist or poet ever gave it 
thrilling life. There were no impetuous Paul Revere 
verses, and no Browning put such fire into this ride 
from Dover to Philadelphia as has been given to the 
gallop from Ghent to Aix. Alas! the best that was 
done for Caesar Rodney, versically, were such lines 
as: 

67 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

* * Ho, saddle the black ! I 've but half a day, 
And the Congress sits eighty miles away"; and 
**The Congress is met; the debate is begun, 
And Liberty lags for the vote of one — 
When into the hall, not a moment too late. 
Walks Caesar Eodney, the delegate." 

I have read in somebody's long-ago memoirs, but 
not of a date quite so far back as the time of Jeffer- 
son, that somebody one day asked him how he 
reconciled the *'A11 men are created equaP' clause, 
that he had written, with the existence of slavery. 
For a moment he was dumb with astonishment, then : 
**By God! I never thought of that before!" 

"Where is Jefferson?" wrote Washington, from 
Valley Forge. The long slim statesman is very 
prominent in Trumbull's picture, and was so in 
reality ; but during the terrible days of Valley Forge, 
although then only about thirty-five years old, he 
was not with the army! His words had got other 
men in! Nor was he even with Congress. He had 
recently resigned, when strong men were desperately 
needed there, and had given his private concerns as 
excuse! He was rich, with a huge estate. He en- 
tered the State legislature, and before the war was 
over became Governor of Virginia. 

After all, North and South were alike; Hancock 
and Samuel Adams galloping in mad fear away from 
the coming fight at Lexington, and Jefferson shrink- 
ing from Valley Forge. If one chose to be cynical, 
he might remark that a successful statesman is a 
man who gets others to fight and then keeps away 

68 



THE STATE HOUSE 

from the fighting. But one need not be cynical about 
exceptions. Franklin would readily have fought, 
but he was almost seventy, and the country needed 
him to be in France. Washington fought. Most of 
the men of the time fought or were quite ready to 
fight. 

Quite a number of years after the Eevolution, 
Philadelphia awoke to the realization that it did not 
know in which building Jefferson actually wrote the 
Declaration; and, as the matter began to be talked 
about, some one remembered — it was now 1825 — 
that Jefferson was still living, and thereupon wrote 
and asked him, and Jefferson's response was that he 
was lodging, at the time of writing the Declaration, 
in a new brick house, three stories high, on Market 
Street, between Seventh and Eighth, of which he 
rented the second floor, and that it was there that he 
wrote it. He added that he had ''some idea it was a 
corner house." And it was. A man named Gratz 
was his landlord, and it was a new house at Market 
and Seventh streets. The building was not many 
years ago torn down, and the building of the Penn 
National Bank stands in its place, bearing a tablet 
setting forth the important fact regarding the Dec- 
laration. 

How very near the Revolution is! To any one 
who studies history and knows human nature, it was 
but yesterday. But to hear a Philadelphian casually 
say, "When my great-grandmother received General 
So-and-so at her home here in 1776," or, "My great- 
grandfather gave more money to the Revolutionary 

69 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

cause than any other man except his fellow-towns- 
man, Robert Morris," or, **My family have always 
told that on the day of the Signing," and so on, 
brings it very close and very real. 

The State House, "Independence Hall," was 
planned in 1729 and completed, except as to wings 
and tower, five years later: — quite old enough, one 
sees, to satisfy even a Walter Scott! But it must 
not be thought that it is beautiful or interesting prin- 
cipally on account of age. Age adds to a beautiful 
building the salt and savor of time, the romantic 
patina, literal or metaphorical, that com.es with the 
decades. But this State House is beautiful in itself; 
it was beautiful when it was young and new; it will 
remain beautiful as long as it stands, with its tradi- 
tions growing more interesting with time. After all, 
Philadelphia was the largest and richest Colonial 
city of Great Britain, and so it was natural that a 
fine administrative structure should be built here. 
And it was put up in the same period which saw the 
construction of two other admirable State Houses, 
that of Boston (not the stately pillared building 
of the present time, but the delightful ancient 
State House), and the charming State House of 
Annapolis. All three are lessons in good taste, in 
positive beauty. And the Philadelphia structure is 
the finest of the three. 

But what chances of leadership Philadelphia 
quietly relinquished! Those other cities of early 
and beautiful State Houses have retained their 
literal capital importance. But Philadelphia let 

70 



THE STATE HOUSE 

her headship of the nation pass. She even let pass 
the headship of the State. 

The State House has witnessed many important 
scenes, besides those connected with the Declara- 
tion. Here assembled thousands of cheering citizens 
when the news came of Concord and Lexington. 
Here Washington was chosen commander-in-chief. 
Here, in 1781, the captured standards of the army 
of Cornwallis were brought by a cavalry escort and 
formally carried into the building and laid before 
Congress. Here Lincoln raised a flag on Washing- 
ton's Birthday, 1861, and four years later his body 
was carried here to lie in state, his troubles forever 
at an end. The Constitution was debated, agreed to, 
and signed, in this building; and Franldin, who had 
watched and taken part in the proceedings with in- 
tense anxiety, breathed a deep sigh of relief and said, 
gravely, that in the vicissitudes and anxieties of day 
after day he had looked at the representation of the 
sun on the back of the chair used by Washington, 
the presiding officer (the same chair that had been 
used by Hancock) ; and he had wondered, day by day, 
whether it was a rising or a setting sun, but now he 
knew that it was a rising sun. 

The State House is a beautiful building, alike in 
its mass effects and in its smallest details, in the 
views of it from the exterior or in rooms within. 
Its fagade is exactly centered, and similarly winged 
and arcaded at right and left. It is beautiful and it 
is balanced. 

Seen from Independence Square, which is a large 

71 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

open space, stone paved, with intervening surfaces of 
grass and fair-sized trees, it is a towered building 
of time-mellowed brick, with white window stones, 
with smallish pillared doorway beneath a tower built 
outside the lines of the main buildiDg, and, over this 
doorway, a splendid Palladian window. Above are 
cornicings, and a fetching, bulging, bow-fronted 
window, and above this is a clock-tower, square at the 
bottom and rising in eight-sided diminutions to a 
six-sided narrow pinnacle which is topped by a 
trident-like weathervane of gilt. 

Enter beneath the triple Palladian window, with 
its heavy muntins, and, passing by the foot of the 
finest stairs in America, you enter a broad and brick- 
paved central hall; and there comes the sense of a 
glory of white, with touches of mahogany and dark- 
ish green. 

The rooms are serenely beautiful; they are digni- 
fied, large and light; there are pillars and pilasters, 
there are charming cornices, there are panels; in 
every direction one sees beautiful corners or vistas 
or entrance-ways. The view through the arches of 
the room of the Supreme Court, into and across the 
Hall of the Signing, defined by those three pilastered 
arches, is astonishingly effective. 

At the foot of the wonderful stairs now stands the 
Liberty Bell, upon which may still be read the Bible 
verse which long before the Eevolution was cast upon 
it by its makers: ''Proclaim liberty throughout all 
the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof." 

The stair mounts, ramp by ramp, within the great 

72 



THE STATE HOUSE 

tower; a broad stair with broad treads and low 
risers ; and on the second floor, as on the first, there 
are everywhere long and lovely vistas of distinction. 
And on the second floor is a great banqueting hall, 
entered through a delicately bell-flowered doorway 
topped by a beautiful fanlight, occupying the entire 
length of the building; and at each end of the great 
room is a broad fireplace, with the intent that the two 
shall flicker at each other with fineness of effect. 

The Hall of the Signing is a noble room which it- 
self might weU inspire to noble deeds. It is a beauti- 
fully pilastered room with three great broad-silled 
windows on each side and with two of its corners 
rounding. Here is not only the chair of Hancock, 
but here, too, is the desk which he used, here is the 
silver inkstand into which he dipped his pen, with 
quill-pen holder and sanding-box, looking, in all, some- 
thing like a cruet of the period, and standing upon a 
little four-legged silver salver. It is an admirable 
bit of workmanship, one of the best by that Syng 
who, a friend of Franklin and a man of standing, 
was among the most interesting of early Philadel- 
phia silversmiths, of whom there were so many, in 
early days, that fifty-six walked in one parade in the 
1780 's. Others were scattered throughout the 
country, in little towns and big, working toward high 
standards of craftsmanship. This inkstand, as a 
reminder of early American art, is of interest ap- 
proaching that of the work of the contemporaneous 
silver-worker of Boston, Paul Revere, he of the Eide. 

The chairs, except that of the presiding officer, 

73 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

that for many years have been shown as those used 
by the Signers, do not seem to be the actual chairs, 
as they are of the style of a later period. They were 
doubtless secured for legislative meetings here, after 
the Revolution, the original chairs having been mis- 
used, broken and burned, in the period of British 
occupancy, when the State House and much of its 
contents were rather roughly treated. 

The Hall of the Signing — about such a room such 
details ought to be known — is thirty-nine feet and 
six inches wide, by forty feet and two inches long, 
with a height of nineteen feet and eight inches; the 
intent having apparently been to have it precisely 
forty by forty by twenty. 

Sully's portrait of Lafayette displays the French- 
man as he appeared on his visit in 1824 ; he wears a 
coat with a lining of old-rose silk, and his pleasantly 
humorous look accents the length of his long nose; 
and his face does naturally lend itself to likable 
humor I And here, too, facing Lafayette at the foot 
of the grand staircase, is a painting of Washing- 
ton. 

It is somewhat unfortunate that the high value of 
many other portraits that have been preserved iii 
the State House has been lowered by the intrusion 
of copies, hung on the same walls as the original por- 
traits, and of pictures of doubtful pedigree. Tliis 
grew to be such a glaring matter that to enter the 
State House and look around at the portraits used 
to give one somewhat the feeling of the tourist who, 
entering Holyrood, is sho^vn long lines of mythical 

74 



THE STATE HOUSE 

portraits said to be those of Scottish kings. Yet the 
fault, in the State House, is to be remedied, and in 
fact the matter has for a long time been under exami- 
nation. Such portraits as those, of veritable 
authenticity, by Charles W. Peale, of a number of 
the Signers, would alone make the building a 
treasure house, and there are also the little pastels, 
veritable gems, of fascinating interest, made by 
James Sharpies, including one of exceptional in- 
terest, made of Washington, from life, in 1796. 
Englishman though he was. Sharpies did a distinct 
service to America in making these pastels; and at 
the prices he received, fifteen dollars each for pro- 
files and twenty for full face, he could not have be- 
come precisely wealthy. The city purchased the 
Sharpies collection, of forty-five pastels, in 1876. 

A vigorous statue, placed with peculiar promi- 
nence opposite the Independence Square face of the 
State House is of Barry, a naval officer of the Revo- 
lution, a Philadelphian. He is buried in the Catholic 
St. Mary's, on Fourth Street, adding thus to the 
striking number of naval officers of note who are 
buried in Philadelphia. On the broad sidewalk, in 
front of the Chestnut face of the building, is an in- 
effective statue of Washington. 

A tang of especial distinction is given to the ad- 
mirable Chestnut Street face of the State House 
by the unusually high keystones, of marble, which 
center the brick above each of the ample windows 
and rise into a band of dark gray marble that ex- 
tends across the entire one hundred and seven feet 

75 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

of the building's front; and by a line, above this 
band, of nine panels of marble, beneath the windows 
of the second floor. The quoins on the corners, and 
the fine wooden cornice and balustrade, add still 
further distinction; and in all it is a noble and dis- 
tinguished building, rich in noble and distinguished 
memories. 

The Fourth of July and the Declaration of In- 
dependence have become so associated in the public 
mind that it is odd to realize that at the time of that 
first ''Fourth," of 1776, it was not so particularly 
held to be a day of importance. 

On June 7, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia (a 
Philadelphian, writing of this, would be sure to put 
in the fact that a sister of Lee married into the 
powerful Shippen family of this city) moved, ''That 
these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, 
free and independent states.'* 

Congress directed the secretary not to mention in 
the journal the name of Lee, or that of the seconder 
of the motion, John Adams, for fear of British 
punishment, and so the record reads, "Certain 
resolutions regarding independency being moved and 
seconded. ' ' 

A committee to prepare a statement or declara- 
tion was appointed on June 11. A sub-committee 
was then appointed, consisting of Jefferson and 
John Adams. Jefferson wrote the Declaration. 
He himself said that he wrote it, and Adams also 
said that Jefferson wrote it, so no attention need be 
paid to those who from time to time have attempted 

76 



THE STATE HOUSE 

to claim that it was some one else than Thomas 
Jefferson. 

On July 2 Congress voted formally for independ- 
ence. On the third and fourth the precise form of 
statement was debated. And on the ''Fourth" the 
form written out by Jefferson, with some merely 
minor alterations, was accepted. Thus did the 
''Fourth" begin. But nobody except Congress then 
knew it ! The public could know little as to precisely 
what was going on, for the meetings were secret. 

After all, it was at that early period still to be 
deemed treason, and the delegates could not afford 
to be heedless of that fact. On the eighth of July 
the Declaration was read formally to the people, 
from a platform beside the State House, and the 
Liberty Bell rang out its peal, and all the bells of the 
city echoed it. For some days the passage of the 
Declaration had in a general way been known, the 
news having seeped out; but as America had been 
actually at war for over a year, the voting of the 
Declaration did not, at the time, seem so vital as it 
seems to-day. And it was noted and noticed that, 
on the day of the formal reading, the rich and dis- 
tinguished folk of the city were not here, to en- 
courage the movement; no large crowd gathered; 
and the few who stood and listened were of the 
poorer class. There were "not half a dozen good 
coats" in the crowd, as a Philadelphian wrote, and 
it was a thoroughly Philadelphian observation. 

But the Fourth of July gradually took hold of the 
minds and hearts of the people, throughout our en- 

77 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

tire country; and with most excellent reason, for it 
was on that day that the Declaration of Independ- 
ence was actually adopted, and was signed by the 
President of Congress, and became formally our 
nation's act. 

Within a year the ''Fourth" had won its position, 
and I like to think of the very first of the annual 
celebrations, on July 4, 1777, in this city of the 
Signing. Congress was still in session here, and 
there were parades and reviews, of both the land 
and the sea forces, there being several ships in the 
river at the time. There was music by a Hessian 
band that had been captured at Trenton on the 
Christmas previous — ^what an amazingly good touch ! 
— and at night nearly every housefront was charm- 
ingly aglow with candles lighted and set in the 
windows. 

Just a trifle away from the east wing of the State 
House, at the corner of Chestnut and Fifth streets, 
is a smallish building which was put up in 1791 for 
the use of the Supreme Court of the LTnited States, 
and the little building at the corner of Chestnut and 
Sixth is still more interesting; it would, in fact, be 
of far more interest than it is were it not that its 
fame is overshadowed by that of the more notable 
State House beside it; for this smallish building is 
Congress Hall, and in it Congress met while Phila- 
delphia was the national capital, and here Washing- 
ton was inaugurated for his second term. Here, too, 
in this little building, Washington pronounced that 
Farewell Address which, delivered toward the close 

78 



THE STATE HOUSE 

of Ms second administration, stands so superbly as 
a model of dignity and far-sightedness. One seems 
still to see Mm, to hear Mm, so solemnly offering to 
the new nation that he loved Ms profoundly earnest 
advice. 

It was also in tMs demure little building, standing 
so almost unnoticed beside the imposing State House, 
that Washington, a few months after the delivery of 
this Farewell Address, turned over the Presidency 
to his successor, John Adams. And in regard to tMs 
there is a remarkable account. 

It seems that the people who packed the building 
and thronged round about it thought but little of the 
new President, and of Jefferson, the new Vice-Presi- 
dent, compared with the man they so loved, who was 
leaving them. When Adams and Jefferson went 
away they went practically alone. Washington 
stood, to watch them go. And the throng stayed, 
in silence, to look to the last moment upon Washing- 
ton. And it was noted and written down, that he 
wore on that day a suit of black velvet, that his hair 
was powdered and in a bag, that he wore diamond 
knee-buckles and a gray-scabbarded light sword. 

Adams went to his room at the Indian Queen, 
at High Street and South Fourth, and the punctilious 
Washington started gravely to walk there, ''to pay 
my respects to the new President." In total silence 
the great crowd followed him. The door opened; 
but before entering, he turned and looked silently 
at the people. Tears rolled down his cheeks, and 
from the crowd there arose a kind of groan. He 

79 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

said nothmg; he bowed, slowly and profoundly, in 
recognition of the tribute, and then slowly entered 
the inn. 




80 



CHAPTER VI 



THE HALL OF AN ANCIENT GUILD 




T is a fascinating feature of 
Philadelphia that she still re- 
tains the hall of an ancient guild. 
Not a guildhall in the sense of 
town-hall, but the literal hall 
of a literal guild of the olden 
time; and it arouses romantic 
thoughts of the past, pictures 
of the artisans of the ancient 
cities of Lombardy gathering 
together and making their 
guilds and their cities powerful, pictures of the 
ancient guilds of England, with their power and ex- 
clusiveness and picturesqueness, pictures of the 
richly-built guildhalls on the market squares of old 
Dutch cities. For the past was not only a time of 
wars. The picturesqueness of the past lies not only 
in fighting, in armor and castles and battlefields; it 
lies also in the homely, friendly life of the people, 
their organizations, the strength which came to them 
from banding together. 

The Guild of the Carpenters of Philadelphia was 
organized in 1724 ; the date pointing out, what should 
never be forgotten, that it is an error to think of 
our country as a new country, or to take it that all 

81 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

of our cities are new cities. This Philadelphia guild 
was definitely patterned after the ''Worshipful 
Company of Carpenters of London," which had been 
founded some two hundred and fifty years earlier; 
in 1477, to be precise; this date pointing out that, 
although Philadelphia is old, it is not so old as 
London ; but such things are from necessity compara- 
tive, and one might go back to the earliest of the 
London guilds, founded in the eleven hundreds, and 
from that to the still more ancient guilds of Italy. 
So, this old guild of Philadelphia is a very old guild 
indeed, even though other guilds are older. 

And I think it is not a mere fancy, but a very real 
fact, that the excellent ideals of probity and fair 
dealing which I have met with in the course of years 
of knowledge of the city, are owing, not alone to the 
sober honesty of the early Quakers, and to the 
economical honesty of the early "Pennsylvania 
Dutch," but to the influence of this Carpenters* 
Company and its openly expressed standards ; for its 
early articles, formally set down, declared that 
prices should be based upon equitable principles, 
so that "the workmen should have a fair recompense 
for their labor, and the owner receive the worth 
of his money;" which principle, after all, expresses 
the very root and essence of fair dealing. 

This hall of the organization was not its earliest 
meeting place, but was built in 1770, and around it 
then was an open space, which extended from Chest- 
nut to Walnut streets, between Third and Fourth. 
Carpenters' Hall still stands in the center of that block, 

82 



THE HALL OF AN ANCIENT GUILD 

but it is tucked in and quite put out of ordinary sight 
among the tall buildings that have arisen all around it. 

And it has become an almost forgotten building, 
in consequence of thus being put out of general 
sight, of thus being so surrounded that it is not seen 
except by such as are definitely in search of it. For 
although it looks down a narrow court toward Chest- 
nut Street, it is a very narrow court indeed, with 
nothing to attract the attention of the casual passer- 
by. And so it has become a building overlooked, dis- 
regarded, a building almost mythical, even though 
it actually stands here in fascinating actuality. I 
should think it probable that three quarters, or even 
more, of the inhabitants of Philadelphia do not know 
that such a building is honorably preserved ; and the 
number of those who would be able to walk directly 
to the spot is quite negligible. 

In Carpenters' Hall the work of independence 
was begun in 1774, by the representatives of the 
people. In ** Independence Hall," as the old State 
House is often called, the work was completed, in 
1776. The history of the beginning is so merged in 
the overshadowing history of the conclusion that to 
many a Philadelphian the very identity of one build- 
ing is literally lost in the greater fame of the other ; 
and to such people this extremely interesting ancient 
Hall of the Carpenters has never had an existence! 

Before me is a book containing an account of the 
Signing of the Declaration of Independence, pub- 
lished in the year 1876, the year of the Centennial, 
when every detail and incident and locality bearing 

83 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

upon Philadelphia and the Eevolution was discussed 
and rediscussed, and was supposedly in the minds of 
all Philadelphians and visitors and a great mass of 
the population of the United States. For 1876 was 
a year that drew marvelous attention to Philadel- 
phia and aroused and awakened the keenest interest 
of Philadelphians themselves. The book bears the 
name of one R. M. Devens, described on the title 
page as ''Member of the Historical Society of Penn- 
sylvania." And in the last paragraph of the de- 
scription of the Signing are the words : 

"Carpenters' Hall — or Independence Hall — ^in 
Philadelphia, where the tremendous scenes tran- 
spired, is still one of the places which every Ameri- 
can looks upon with patriotic pride"; as if the two 
buildings were one and the same! 

It was in 1774 that Carpenters' Hall won its fame. 
The members of the First Continental Congress had 
gathered, from the various colonies, in Philadelphia, 
and had tentatively met in the morning of Septem- 
ber the 5th, at the City Tavern, on Second Street, 
near "Walnut. It was the newest and most fashion- 
able of the taverns of that time ; it was a coffee house 
as well as a tavern ; and it had quite taken the leader- 
ship from others. And there were quite a number 
of others from which choice might have been made. 
The members might have been called together at the 
Crooked Billet Inn, or at Pewter Platter Inn or 
Pegg Mullen's Beefsteak House, or the Indian King 
(what Philadelphia has lost in picturesque names!), 
or the Black Bear, or the Three Crowns ; but the City 

84 



THE HALL OF AN ANCIENT GUILD 

Tavern, a new building, with prices that were men- 
tioned with criticism in some of the letters home, was 
preferred. It was the Bellevue-Stratford or Ritz- 
Carlton of that Philadelphia day. And it long re- 
tained high standing; for, years afterward, when 
Washington first entered Philadelphia as President 
of the United States, it was to the City Tavern, for 
his temporary quarters, that the Light Infantry 
proudly escorted him. And Washington must have 
been properly impressed by thoughts of all that had 
happened since the days of 1774, when he was at the 
tavern as one of the delegates from Virginia. 

Of course, the formal meeting was not to be held at 
the tavern. And just where it was to be held was 
something of a question, as Philadelphia was then, 
as it still is, a city without a recognized place for 
gatherings of protest. It neither had then nor has 
now a Faneuil Hall or a Cooper Union, for critical 
folk, or would-be reformers, or organizers of new 
movements, naturally to come together ; and this has 
had the effect of rendering the city's own feeling of 
protest practically voiceless. But this Continental 
Congress was another matter. It was a gathering 
of the most notable men of America. The question 
of a meeting-place was discussed, and one of the 
delegates reported that the Guild of the Carpenters 
offered their building, with its hall; and the dele- 
gates, after a few questions concerning the Car- 
penters, accepted the offered courtesy. 

Then they all walked, by twos and threes, in gen- 
eral friendly companionship, along the narrow brick 

85 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

sidewalks, the short distance from the tavern to 
Carpenters' Hall. I have always thought that I 
should like to know just who walked with each other ; 
who walked by the side of the always stately Wash- 
ington, who measured steps with the short John 
Adams and the tall Jefferson, who chose Franklin 
for companion, or whom did Franklin choose. It 
was but a few minutes' walk; it was a walk of the 
briefest; but it was the most interesting walk in 
American history. 

The proceedings of the Congress were secret; the 
public were not admitted and the deliberations were 
not announced; but it was inevitable that much in 
regard to the arguments considered and the speakers 
who took part would seep out in private conversation. 
And the English, realizing that the fact of the Con- 
gress m^eant the possibility of war, had placed in the 
city a secret agent of delightful manner and in- 
gratiating ways, to inform himself of what went on 
and then inform the British Government. 

This was John Andre. Put into a clerkship in a 
counting-house, by his father, he had determined to 
escape from what he deemed business drudgery. 
His manner and ability secured him a commission in 
the army. He spent two years in France and Ger- 
many, keeping his eyes very wide open. He was 
ordered in 1774 to Quebec, and could have gone 
directly there in the same ship with Sir Guy 
Carleton, his new commander, and the staff; but, 
somehow, he sailed for Philadelphia instead, al- 
though when there he was as far from Quebec as 

86 



THE HALL OF AN ANCIENT GUILD 

when he was in London. He was an ideal secret 
service man, for he could make friends of men and 
of women alike, and made himself cognizant of the 
general trend of the Congress, of the character of 
its leaders, of the feelings of the people. Then he 
went to New York, and thence, leisurely to Boston; 
only after a considerable time turning seriously 
toward Quebec with his gathered information. 
There he was attached to the unfortunate Seventh 
Eegiment which, when war actually began, was the 
first to lose its colors to the Americans; and it is a 
pretty touch which, in a letter of John Adams, is 
shown us, of these first-captured colors being ''hung 
up in Madam Hancock's chamber with great splendor 
and elegance." 

Andre himself was captured too, and sent to Lan- 
caster, Pennsylvania, and, after being exchanged, 
went to New York and submitted such a report on 
his observations that General Howe advanced him 
to a captaincy and put him on the staff of General 
Grey. And then, after a while, by way of the fight 
at Paoli, Andre was to get back to Philadelphia. 

All of which has taken us for a little from Carpen- 
ters' Hall; but Andre's secret reports about it were 
important and Andre himself has always figured 
prominently in the minds and imagination of Ameri- 
cans : his scarlet coat still glows like a scarlet splotch 
on the Revolutionary pages. 

The building of the carpenters, this Carpenters' 
Hall, is far from large, and seems even smaller than 
it actually is on account of being so nooked in, so put 

87 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

away in a corner, so placed out of sight, so over- 
topped by the buildings standing close about. 

But the actual meeting-room is of unexpectedly 
generous proportions, after the sense of smallness 
received from the f agade. And they were broad sub- 
jects discussed in that broad room by that first Con- 
tinental Congress; and that some two months were 
taken up in the discussions was partly because the 
subjects were new and crucial, as bearing upon at- 
tempted independence, and partly because, as some 
one of the members cleverly remarked, each man was 
a man of unusual ability, distinguished as an orator 
or critic or statesman, and therefore each man had 
to give proof that he was an orator, critic or states- 
man, and that, had some one made a motion that 
three and two make five, it would have been debated 
acutely, eloquently, profoundly, by all the members, 
from every angle, and in the end the decison would 
have been that three and two make five. 

The members were feeling their way across un- 
mapped political fields; they were wise and saga- 
cious men ; they would not be hurried ; and in the end, 
when they went to their homes, it was clear that the 
struggle for independence had in spirit begun. 

The first meeting for actual discussion, after two 
days of organization, here in this hall, was deeply 
impressive. Although the meetings were behind 
closed doors, certain details came to be well known. 
On the second day it was decided to open subsequent 
meetings with prayer, and so, on the third day, 
Duche, the brilliant rector of Christ Church, thus 

88 



THE HALL OF AN ANCIENT GUILD 

officiated, on formal request of the members; an 
Episcopalian being chosen as the one most likely to 
be agreeable to all sects; and it was noticed that 
while others stood, Washington, Episcopalian that 
he was, knelt, according to Episcopalian form. 

On that day a report was received, which was be- 
lieved to be true although later found to be an en- 
tire mistake or invention, that the British were 
actually firing upon the people in Boston, and this 
caused profound feeling; and it was noted as a strik- 
ing coincidence that the Psalter for the day, read by 
Duche, seemed peculiarly fitting, with its glowing 
sentences regarding protection from enemies, about 
shield and buckler and spear, about the stopping of 
them that persecute; and the effect of this reading 
was immense, upon the delegates, following the sup- 
posed terrible news. Then Duche stepped aside 
from the Episcopalian path and, leaving his book 
of prepared forms, delivered an extemporaneous 
prayer, full of splendid enthusiasm, fuU of splendid 
patriotism, full of inspiration. 

This was the poor Duche who, later appointed 
chaplain to Congress, gave his salary to the families 
of men killed in the war, but lost his popularity, 
never to be regained, by favoring an accommodation 
with England at the black time of Valley Forge. 
He ought to be remembered, too, as the man who 
had first braved public derision by carrying an 
umbrella in the streets of Philadelphia — in itself a 
revolutionary act of bravery which should have 
worked much toward his forgiveness! 

89 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

After the opening prayer there was a long silence, 
which all the members, profoundly impressed as they 
were by what seemed the vastly increased import- 
ance of their deliberations, hesitated to break. But 
at length a grave, plain-looking man, with un- 
powdered wig, and dressed in what was known as 
*' minister's gray," arose and began to speak; and 
the assistant of Duche, who was afterwards to be- 
come Bishop White, has recorded that he listened 
at first with regret to this plain-looking man, sorry 
(Philadelphia like!) that a country parson should so 
presume to lead in the speaking, in the presence of 
men of high standing. Others likewise listened at 
first with disapproval. For only a few knew who 
the speaker was. Scarcely any one knew that he 
and George Washington, the wealthy Southern sol- 
dier and planter, had come to the meeting together, 
traveling in company, on horseback, from Virginia. 

The supposed country parson continued, in such a 
surge of fiery eloquence, that in a few minutes he 
had won the astonished admiration of all. *'Who is 
he? Who is he?" And the word was swiftly passed 
around that his name was Patrick Henry. 

Carpenters' Hall is a model of taste, a fetching, 
felicitous, fascinating building, a building full of sug- 
gestions of the past, a building of brick, with the 
pleasant variegation that comes from headers of 
heavier hue, a balanced building, a building whose 
keynote is symmetrical proportion, with the curious 
structural feature of four faces of equal dimensions, 
and with the pediment above the front door matched 

90 



THE HALL OF AN ANCIENT GUILD 

as to shape and proportions by the larger pediment 
of the gable. The door is set at precisely the right 
height above the pavement, and the three beehive- 
topped windows of the second floor are notably at- 
tractive, with heavy white balusters immediately 
beneath them, and with a double band of white across 
the front. And the little tower, over all, is an addi- 
tional fetching touch. 

The face toward Walnut Street, now hidden by the 
surrounding structures, was apparently in the begin- 
ning meant to be the main entrance, and there is an 
unusually fine fanlight above its door, with a remark- 
able bull's-eye of dark green. 

The interior has suffered from bedizenment of 
intended restoration, with a revel of costly spoilings, 
yet the general effect is still there, for the general 
effect is dependent upon proportion and line; and 
the meeting-room, on the whole, still retains its look 
of the long ago. 

Outwardly, except that it is overshadowed by 
newer structures, the aspect is practically un- 
changed; it is now caught sight of, up its narrow 
court off Chestnut Street, instead of iu an open 
space, but it is practically the same in looks as it was 
in long-past 1774, before Concord and Bunker Hill 
carried its deliberations into action. 

It is delightfully archaic, this smallish building, 
looking so much smaller than it is, yet with its air 
of important age, this building of diversified brick, 
this building in the shape of a Greek cross, an odd 
fancy of those old time carpenters ! It has an aspect 

91 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 



as of a memento of a bygone and forgotten world, 
a relic of the past which looks as if it had been tossed 
by the waves of time into this recess among cliffs of 
modern brick and stone. To a traveler there is al- 
ways pleasure in visiting the unvisited, and at Car- 
penters' Hall that impression comes with curious 
strength. But, whereas in Europe one finds the un- 
visited to be the place unvisited by tourists but per- 
fectly well known to the natives of the region, here in 
Philadelphia one finds that Carpenters ' Hall is visited 
by the tourists but is almost unvisited by the citizens. 
But, to be sure, Philadelphia officially keeps it as 
a proad bit of the distinguished past; and some 
Philadelphians still go there, as one, the other day, 
who was asked by his little son what men had made the 
building famous. ''They were our forefathers, *' was 
the grave reply; ''this building was given its fame 
through such men as George Washington, Benjamin 
Franklin and Thomas Jefferson." "But that's only 
three," said the puzzled boy; "that's not four." 




CHAPTER Vn 



QUAKERS AND MEETING-HOUSES 











N the early days of our participa- 
tion in tlie great war, a party of 
young men of the navy, who had 
gathered at Philadelphia from 
distant parts of the country, 
were taken about by a friend 
from one place to another to 
see the city. There were 
busy hours of going about, 
and toward the close of the 
day the host of the party 
asked if there was anything else which they would 
like to see; something which he had not thought of 
but which they would not like to miss; whereupon, 
after a brief conferring together, the spokesman 
said, "Yes, thank you, there is something else, in 
which all of us are interested: we should like to see 
some Quakers." 

And, when one thinks of it, although this is the 
Quaker City, and although the influence of Quaker 
thought and principles continues to be profound, one 
does not often see men or women garbed as Quakers. 
In the first place, the proportion of Quakers in 
the population has been greatly decreasing. And, 

93 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

secondly, of those who remain, few wear markedly 
any distinctive dress. But in financial strength 
they are powerful, and socially they are powerful, 
and through the marriages of decades their influence 
extends throughout the fiber of the city's best life, 
even though many of those directly allied or an- 
cestrally allied with Quakerism are not themselves 
Quakers. 

And yet, there are Quakers, garbed as Quakers, 
still to be seen. Now and then one sees the broad- 
brimmed hat, the sweet old-fashioned bonnet; but 
rarely except at a meeting at one of the old meeting- 
houses. 

Even if from a pictorial standpoint alone, nothing 
could be more effective and more interesting than the 
meeting-houses of the city and of towns round about. 
They are buildings of picturesque plainness, build- 
ings prim, precise and peaceful. They are buildings 
which represent the extreme of architectural auster- 
ity, yet at the same time with a profound sense of the 
charming. 

The early Quakers believed so strongly in the 
planting of trees along the city streets and sidewalks, 
that Philadelphia used to be lovingly spoken of as the 
"Green City.'* The trees made the city a colorful 
place, in the combination of the red brick of the build- 
ings, the white doorsteps and copings, the herring- 
bone brick pavements, and the shimmering greenery. 
Tree planting was also carried out along the Quaker 
farms outside the city, thus marking the Quaker dis- 
tricts by long avenues of trees along the highways. 

94 



QUAKERS AND MEETING-HOUSES 

Around the Quaker homes and the Quaker meeting- 
houses the trees were set with particular care, to the 
delectation of those who view the huge monarchs 
that many of the Quaker-set trees have become. All 
the famous old roads leading out of Philadelphia 
were tree bordered, for non-Quakers imitated the 
excellent tree-planting example. Buttonwoods and 
sycamores, maples and oaks, such were the principal 
varieties ; for this is not, as is New England, an elm- 
shaded countryside. 

John G. Whittier, the Quaker poet, wrote that he 
thought the old Quaker settlements of the districts 
around Philadelphia ''were nearer the perfection of 
human society than anything I have since seen or had 
heard of before.'* And you fully understand what 
he meant when you are at, say, such a Quaker settle- 
ment as that of Gwynedd. 

Whittier quitted New England for some three 
years, in the late 1830 's, to live in Philadelphia and 
edit an anti-slavery paper here; and he stood one 
night on Sixth Street, between Race and Cherry, 
hastily disguised in an overcoat and a wig (and 
curiosity is balked, as to how he happened so con- 
veniently to find, of all things, a wig!), watching the 
burning, by an infuriated mob of many thousands, 
of a beautiful building which the anti-slavery people 
had built as headquarters. 

He boarded at one place or another, while here, 
and Philadelphia made no particular effort to hold 
him. He usually attended service at the old meet- 
ing-house on Twelfth Street, which is still standing, 

95 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

in the heart of what has become a busy and business 
section; and a charming and peaceful sight it is, this 
old meeting-house, even without the association with 
so distinguished a man as Whittier. 

The famous Lucretia Mott, too, loved this old meet- 
ing-house, and she loved also to worship in the beauti- 
ful old meeting-house in Jenkintown, just a little 
away from the York Road, one of the most peaceful 
spots imaginable. This fine old building, prim and 
full of dignity, known as the Abington Meeting- 
House, stands in the midst of noble trees, the "Oaks 
of Abington. ' ' And as to these there is a story alto- 
gether delightful. For it came to pass that the 
Quakers of that region, many years ago, became 
stressed for money, and there seemed no way of 
obtaining it except by selling their oaks, even then 
of mighty growth. A large sum was offered, and the 
meeting was on the very point of accepting it ; when 
a neighbor, named Fisher, paid them the sum that 
was needed and took the oaks in payment; only to 
present them to the meeting, to stand forever as their 
property. 

The latter years of Lucretia Mott were passed in 
an old house on the York Road somewhat south from 
Jenkintown. She had won fame even in Europe, as 
an anti-slavery leader and a leader in thought, and 
Charles Dickens was one of the many who carried 
letters of introduction to her. She had not expected 
to meet Dickens, he being **not quite of our sort," 
as she calmly wrote, but when he sent a letter from 
an old friend of hers, of London, introducing him- 

96 



QUAKERS AND MEETING-HOUSES 

self and his wife, she with much condescension de- 
cided to call. 

There is something of peculiar charm about the 
Quakers and Quakerism; the charm is compounded 
of the obvious prim sweetness, the picturesque plain- 
ness, and at the same time a sort of intangible es- 
sence of charm. And it need not be deemed out of 
the way or offensive to refer to them as '^ Quakers." 
Formally, they are *' Friends," but they also call 
themselves ** Quakers," and Penn himself frequently 
used the word, so that it is not in the least a term of 
derision. 

Standing within a great open space at Fourth and 
Arch streets is what is looked upon as the principal 
meeting-house of the original Quakers : for there are 
two sects, these quiet people, averse to quarreling 
as they are, having had bitter dissensions a century 
or so ago, in consequence of which they divided 
into Orthodox and Hicksite; and as the Hicksites 
outnumber the Orthodox here in Philadelphia they 
naturally deem themselves just as orthodox as the 
officially orthodox. But this meeting-house on Arch 
Street is one of the buildings of the officially ortho- 
dox. 
The big area about this meeting-house is shut in 
by a nine-foot wall of brick, with long brick panels 
and a topping of stone; and there is spaciousness 
of aspect, with trees and grass, and toward one side 
is the fine old meeting-house itself. It is of brick, with 
extraordinarily broad gable in the center and broad 
hipped wings, and dates from 1804. It is one hundred 

97 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

and eighty feet in length, thus being the largest 
Quaker meeting-house in the world. 

Whether Hicksite or Orthodox, all are interesting, 
and to non-Quakers all seem alike. And their build- 
ings and setting seem all alike. I remember a nar- 
row gate in a high wall near Sixteenth and Eace 
streets ; something that is always felicitous, as Henry 
James somewhere says ; and I went inside, for there 
was a glimpse of an ancient burying-ground : and in- 
side of a long enclosing brick wall I found a great 
open space, with a Quaker schoolhouse at one side, 
and old trees scattered about, and children playing: 
and all this quiet spaciousness just a few blocks from 
City Hall, The Quakers here are Orthodox, and the 
other great grounds, with buildings, near at hand, be- 
long to the Hicksites ; but, as I said, their places all 
look charmingly alike. I was walking one day on 
Fifteenth Street, northward between Cherry and 
Eace, and I was tempted to turn into a narrow iron- 
gated, brick-paved passageway, and found it open- 
ing into a big and sunny brick-paved court, and there 
I found a peaceful green-and-white-shuttered meet- 
ing-house, sleeping beside a patch of green grass, in 
the shade of a few horse-chestnuts and a few maples. 

Here, as with the other Quaker spot just described, 
I was fortunate in entering by the most felicitous 
approach, instead of by approaches not quite so 
fascinating. And I felt as if entering into some- 
thing like the Temple Gardens of London; ancient 
places, with passages and gateways, and buildings 
dreaming peacefully in the heart of a busy city. 

98 



QUAKEES AND MEETING-HOUSES 

The typical Quaker is credited with much of 
commonsense, and also with the possibility of a 
gently acid touch to his words; and Philadelphians 
consider as typical the story of the man who went 
to his Quaker friend for advice as to the buying of a 
horse. "I want a horse," he said, *'that must not 
cost much, but which shall be nice and quiet for 
mother to drive out with and make calls in the after- 
noon, one broken to the saddle so that I may go horse- 
back-riding in the morning, one that is strong enough 
to draw the carriage when we go to church ; a horse 
that can be depended upon for drawing the la^vn 
mower, and also for cultivating the garden, one that 
would be equal to pulling in a load of hay, and that 
could be used to go back and forth on errands and- to 
the railway station. Now, can you tell me where 
to find such a horse f" 

*'No," said the Quaker quietly; **I know of no 
such horse. But as thee looks for one why does thee 
not get one that is also a good milker T' 

The sect takes pride in upholding the ideal 
announced in the city's name; and this ideal of 
brotherly love you will find not a vanished ideal 
among them, but one still justifying its tradition, in 
hospitality to accredited strangers, in a certain quiet 
gentleness; and its traditions are shown markedly 
by that group of idealists, the few orthodox Friends 
who still publish little leaflets of altruism, still watch 
the action of the legislature and school boards, still 
are prompt with delegation and protest when honor 
or public betterment demands or when the poor and 

99 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

downtrodden are being unfairly pushed, still teach 
Indian children industry, through a reservation in 
an adjoining State, still love their fellowman; — ^but 
even their broad and gentle love does not seem quite 
to cover their schismatically separated brothers, the 
Hicksites. 

It was really by an odd chance that William Penn, 
the Quaker, became the founder of a commonwealth. 
A large money debt had been owed to his father, 
Admiral Penn, by the King; and in this claim against 
royalty consisted the main part of William's in- 
heritance; and the King, the Merry Monarch, 
Charles the Second, was merrily pleased to give cer- 
tain square miles of wilderness in cancellation of the 
debt. And Penn, with broad ideas that had come 
to him of doing good to mankind and setting an 
example of good government and humanity, gladly 
accepted. 

It was always a matter of pride on the part of 
Penn that he came unarmed to America, and that no 
Quaker was ever killed by an Indian; in this, mark- 
ing quite a contrast with the other Colonies, with 
their tragic records of Indian wars. Obviously this 
was a Penn that was mightier than the sword. But 
the Colony was openly taunted by the other Colonies 
of the period, because, as they declared, the Indians 
believed that the Quakers were not Christians, but 
men, like the Indians themselves I 

Penn desired freedom even for the slaves. He 
planned for education, and the WiUiam Penn 
Charter School, still existent, to which he actually 

100 



QUAKERS AND MEETING-HOUSES 

gave the charter — it being not only named for him 
but founded by him — is among the most distinguished 
schools of the city or State. Although it may be re- 
gretted that in putting up new buildings, some years 
ago, which were probably enough advisable according 
to modern demands of health and eyesight, the trus- 
tees lost sight of beauty and ignored the spirit of the 
past. 

William Penn was perhaps not always strictly 
consistent. No one ever was. And his secretary, 
James Logan, who immensely loved and honored 
him, loved to tell of an incident of either the first or 
second Atlantic crossing of Penn, when, a supposed 
privateer being sighted, the Commonwealth founder 
and several other Quakers consistently went below, 
as non-combatants, while Logan himself stayed and 
took his place at a gun; and that when it was dis- 
covered that it was not a hostile ship, and Penn came 
on deck again, he chided Logan for being so wicked 
as to be ready to fight, whereupon Logan sturdily 
reminded him that no objection had been expressed 
to his fighting so long as the other vessel was sup- 
posedly hostile, and that there was complete will- 
ingness to have him fight when Penn, as his superior, 
could have ordered him below. 

Shortly after founding Philadelphia, Penn made a 
treaty of amity with the Indians; the only treaty, 
as some great Frenchman remarked — (was it not 
Voltaire?) — which was not sworn to yet which was 
never broken. 

The spot where the conference with the Indians 

101 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

was held has been remembered. It was in what is 
now called Kensington, at first a suburban village but 
long since incorporated with the city; it is reached 
from the center of the city through a region of long 
stretches of old-time markets in the middle of the 
street, and then an old-time village section is come 
upon, with oddly crooking streets twisting past flat- 
iron-pointed corners where right-angles cease to 
exist, streets with many an old-fashioned little 
dormered house of brick, and — uncommon sight in 
Philadelphia ! — little dormered houses of wood. 

A park has been preserved around the spot, still 
known as Shackamaxon, where long stood the 
Treaty Elm under which the treaty was made. The 
park is a tiny bit of greenery, dotted with little elms 
which are said to be descendants of the original 
Treaty Tree. Close-hemmed in by big modern 
manufacturing establishments and great piles of 
lumber, the little park faces out over a great glim- 
mering stretch of the Delaware. And a monument, 
a little pyramidal monolith, plain and simple, a 
modest memorial of a momentous act, stands there. 

"As long as water flows and the sun shines and 
grass grows ;'^ thus was the treaty to endure. And 
still, where the treaty was made, the grass grows 
green and fresh; still, in front of this little patch of 
greenery, the great stream moves on in quiet glory ; 
still, over all, the sun is shining and the cloud-flecked 
sky is fair and blue. It is well for Philadelphians to 
remember and honor this spot; it would be well for 
the world to honor this spot; this spot, where was 

102 



QUAKEKS AND MEETING-HOUSES 

signed an unbroken treaty; probably the only treaty 
of the world's history which was not broken when 
temptation and opportunity came hand in hand. 

Penn deserved a fine and happy life, so many were 
his fine and happy deeds ; but his latter years, which 
he had vainly hoped to spend in his own province 
and city, were checkered with disappointments, be- 
reavements, criticism and even an imprisonment for 
debt. 

'*And thou, Philadelphia,'' he wrote feelingly: 
**And thou, Philadelphia, the virgin settlement of 
this province, named before thou wert born, what 
love, what care, what service, and what travail has 
there been, to bring thee forth and preserve thee 
from such as would abuse and defile thee!" 

Macaulay, himself born of a Quaker mother, alone 
among historians has failed to appreciate what seem 
now to have been unquestionably the noble qualities 
of Penn; or rather, while appreciating the noble 
qualities, he at the same time believed that he saw 
serious faults; and the year after the death of 
Macaulay, Whittier wrote some fiery lines on him 
for having attacked this chief saint of the Quaker 
calendar in regard to some shortcomings in his con- 
duct in England. "For the sake of his great-hearted 
father before him; for the sake of the dear Quaker 
mother that bore him; for the sake of his gifts, and 
the works that outlive him, and his brave words for 
freedom, we freely forgive him. " Which would have 
mattered little to Macaulay even had he been living, 
for he asked no forgiveness, being at least sincere, 

103 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

though mistaken. And Macaulay seems to have been 
mistaken, largely through a mistake in identity be- 
tween Penn and a hanger-on at the English court 
named Pen. 

The verses on Macaulay tempt Whittier to the use 
of the name of another historian in an interesting 
reference to the decreasing numbers of the sect ; and 
he writes: 

"There are those who take note that our number are small — 
New Gibbons who write our decline and our fall; 
But the Lord of the seed-field takes care of his own, 
And the world shall yet reap what our sowers have sown.'* 

In the case of any great man, nothing is gained and 
something may be lost, by refusing to consider 
critical sidelights from intelligent observers, no 
matter though we think the observer partly or even 
altogether mistaken; and it was with keen interest 
that I chanced upon a summing up of the character 
of Penn, by that "Colonel William Byrd of West- 
over in Virginia Esqr" as he delightfully and with- 
out punctuation cognomened himself. He was the 
builder of the noble mansion of Westover, possessor 
of the largest library, of his early day, in the 
Colonies; he laid out the city of Eichmond, thus 
rivaling Penn in the laying out of Philadelphia; he 
was a man of clear-sighted and humorous cynicism, 
and, to him, the fortunate freedom of Pennsylvania 
from Indian troubles was but due to politic caution 
on the part of the Quakers, who, opposed on prin- 
ciple to war, were wise enough to give no provoca- 

104 



QUAKERS AND MEETING-HOUSES 

tion. And again it is the cynical man of the world 
who, appreciating to the full the worldly success of 
the Quaker colonists, who, as he freely admits, had 
diligence and frugality, dryly writes, * ' and no vices 
but such as are private.'^ Cool criticism of tliis 
nature, intended to be fair, and showing how differ- 
ently men of different temperaments may view 
things, may at least contribute to check any tendency 
toward over-exaltaUon. 

Byrd was not a man of merely provincial outlook. 
He was educated for the law at the Middle Temple 
in London, was frankly well acquainted with the gay 
life of London and Paris that was open to young 
men of wealth, and was living in London as a student 
when Penn was a mature man of affairs there ; and, 
among his gay associates, he picked up the story that 
William Penn, when himself a young man in London, 
before becoming a Quaker, was so handsome and had 
such winning ways as to be a great favorite with 
the ladies; notably with a mistress of the Duke of 
Monmouth, the illegitimate son of Charles the 
Second; and that this connection resulted in a 
daughter who grew up wonderfully handsome and 
''became a Dutchess and continued to be a Toast for 
30 years." But it is not at all necessary to believe 
such a story, for one may see how readily it could 
gain circulation among people whose talks and acts 
were carelessly free, in an age that was notoriously 
careless and free. But the story of the tantalizingly 
un-named "Dutchess" is at least narrated by a great 
Colonial contemporary. 

105 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

For a peaceful folk, the Quakers seem to have 
quite a taste for schisms. Long before the Hicksite 
controversy, there was a schism of Keichites, which 
took so violent a form, here in Philadelphia, as to 
develop into an actual physical contest between the 
two parties ! But the Hicksite controversy seems to 
have been conducted with seemliness of behavior. 
By the way, it is one of the odd things, that the 
Quaker who on horseback followed the body of Tom 
Paine, on its almost unattended journey to New 
Eochelle, was a Hicks, a near connection of him of 
the schism. 

In Philadelphia, and dotted about the countryside 
in the vicinity of Philadelphia, are meeting-houses 
about which no one questions whether Orthodox or 
Hicksite. Every meeting-house is a house of charm, 
of attractiveness, of peace ; every meeting-house is a 
place of beauty and of subtly simple appeal. 

Always the simple, the unornate, the plain. The 
largest of all, and the oldest existent of the city, at 
Fourth and Arch streets, is typically plain, typically 
effective, with its immense concave sounding board, 
its incredibly long and narrow-seated settles, with 
their mortised ends, its galleries supported by Doric 
pilasters and columns of the severest Greek sim- 
plicity. In all, there is an impression of permeative 
gray and brown and time- dulled white that is itself 
almost a gray; but there are a few Venetian blinds 
giving unexpectedly a note of green, and through the 
windows one sees the greenery of the trees. The 
wooden pegs for hats, the gray walls, the unusual 

106 



QUAKERS AND MEETING-HOUSES 

sills, broad and shoulder-high, the windows of many- 
panes, the unbroken serenity of it all, the sense of 
spaciousness which accompanies the prim simplicity, 
all are interesting. 

I remember a First Day morning meeting there. A 
majority of the small congregation went in their 
motor cars, and I set it down, not in the least as 
taking it to be indicative of any trait or any agree- 
ment, but merely as a fact which at once struck me, 
that every motor car (all of them being fairly expen- 
sive, of good make, and well cared for) was of the 
same dark rich green, a green of reserve and 
dignity. 

Inside, in the meeting room, I noticed that the faces 
were notably Anglo-Saxon, sturdy and fine. A few 
elders sat on the front raised benches, facing the 
little gathering, and on the other side sat a few 
elderly sisters also facing those assembled ; the elders 
being really elderly, grayish of hair and likewise 
grayish of whiskers ; and I noticed that a few of them 
wore oddly-cut coats, without lapels at the neck, and 
I wondered if this were the style known to long-ago 
Philadelphians and referred to as ''shad-breasted.'* 
(Some of the men, too, I noticed when the meeting 
broke up, wore hats of broader brims than is custom- 
ary with other folk, though not so broad as pictured 
in cuts of Quakers of olden time.) 

The deaconesses, or eldresses, if one may call them 
such, sat in a row of prim black, all dressed in gowns 
of black; and some — it was a winter's day — ^in shawls 
of black as well. And their faces were gently 

107 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

crumpled into serenest peace, matching the gently 
wizened faces of the oldest of the men. 

It was a meeting of long and restful silences. 
Silent introspection, solemn self-contemplation, a 
speaking only when the spirit moves, are curiously 
impressive. By no means were all of the men and 
women old, yet few were young, and only a small 
number were below middle age; and there came to 
me, perhaps incongruously, the frequently uttered 
Philadelphia pleasantry, *'Who ever saw a Quaker 
babyr' 

For a long time the grave and reverend seniors 
sat in profound silence; the women sat in silence as 
profound; in all, of the men, only two spoke, and 
they spoke briefly, slowly, expressing thoughts of 
gentle beneficence toward all mankind. There was 
no vaunting priggishness, no pretentiousness, no 
claim of merit; it was merely that a group of intelli- 
gent people had gathered, well disposed toward all 
the world. The first speaker enriched his talk, unaf- 
fectedly, with fine Biblical phraseology; the second 
spoke somewhat of the past, and referred to Fox 
as if he were a friend of yesterday. 

A long pause between the brief talks of the two 
men ; a long pause after the words of the second ; a 
pause as of peaceful rumination ; and then one of the 
oldest of the women spoke, taking off her prim black 
bonnet and displaying the white cap beneath. She 
began with a sort of qualdng diffidence, but soon 
her voice grew more steady, more sure, though still 
it was very, very gentle. She spoke even more 

108 



QUAKERS AND MEETING-HOUSES 

briefly than the men, and her subject was charity, 
and ended with a quotation from ' ' The Vision of Sir 
Launfal," brought in with easy naturalness, as if she 
were accustomed to thinking in terms of the poets: 

" 'Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, — 
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me. ' ' ' 

And it was almost startling; for I wondered if 
she knew that, not so many years before the time 
when she herself, sweet old lady that she was, was 
born, the poet who wrote those fine lines had lived 
just across the street from this old meeting-house; 
that James Eussell Lowell, New Englander of New 
Englanders, had for a time lived in the Quaker City 
as a writer, with his wife, and that the house in 
which they lived is still standing, at the northeast 
corner of Fourth and Arch streets, facing diagonally 
this Quaker building. 

At what is now the junction of Thirteenth Street 
and Ridge Avenue there used to be an open space, 
looked upon as a bit of town common. It was reaUy 
a space for pasturage and sheds, established by the 
Quakers for the free use of such of their number as 
should drive in from outlying points to the meetings. 
!With the coming of railroads, the original purpose 
could no longer be carried out, and so a court decree 
permitted the sale of the land and the putting of the 
money into a fund whose interest was to be expended 
in railway fares for not-rich Quakers who wished 
to attend Yearly Meetings or other formal gather- 
ings. 

109 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

But while that bit of land was still open and free, 
it was put to a use of worldwide importance; for 
here, one day, went Benjamin Franklin, accompanied 
by his son William, to fly a kite when thunderclouds 
were piling up in the sky ; the most famous kiteflying 
of the world I 








mm . pn 



..^^^ 



110 



CHAPTER VIII 



OLD SECTIONS OF THE CITY 




NLY gradually does one 
come to realize, even 
thongh familiar with 
the city for years, that 
Philadelphia retains 
much more of the old, 
in buildings, than does 
any other American 
city. Much of the old 
is shabby, but shabbi- 
ness is a frequent ad- 
junct of age, especially 
of a city's age. In 
Philadelphia there grad- 
ually comes the impression of square miles of 
buildings, shabby with time and desertion; and then 
one begins to pick out here and there, buildings of 
especial interest, and to visualize the days that are 
gone; and at the same time one realizes that much' 
of the city's present-day prosperity is directly de- 
pendent upon these shabby- seeming streets. One is 
apt for a time to have an impression of a wilderness 
of gray despair and disrepair. But although there 
is much of the shabby poor, there is also a great deal 
of shabby comfort, in the ancient quarters. And at 

111 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

any moment one may come upon the fasoinating. 

There still stands the home of the Reverend Robert 
Blackwell, of the New York family who owned Black- 
well's Island, which long ago became a spot of as- 
sociations anything but churchly. This Blackwell 
who came to Philadelphia was the wealthiest of 
clergymen in America and one of the wealthiest men 
of this wealthy city. His home, at 224 Pine Street, 
was one of the splendid homes of the time. It is 
now sadly wrecked, it is dirty, dilapidated and dingy, 
and much of its splendid interior panelings and orna- 
mentation have been torn out and carried away. Its 
glory has departed. Yet even now, it can be seen that 
its outside cornice, facing the street, is of intricate 
and elaborate design and workmanship ; indeed, it was 
among the few most elaborate cornices of the city. 

And there is the Powel house, also among the 
finest of all, at 244 South Third Street, with unusual 
overmantel in the main bedroom, and unusual panel- 
ing ; but it is now dingy of aspect, shuttered close, not 
remindful of its glory when Washington was a guest 
here, and when John Adams, in one of those letters 
of his which are stiU a gustatory joy, wrote of a 
dinner here in phrases overflowing with joyful list- 
ing of the curds and creams and sweetmeats, the 
jellies, the tarts the syllabub, the floating island, the 
cheeses and the drinkables. 

Among mementoes of the past there are some 
which, although of unusual interest, are easily and 
generally and literally overlooked. I mean the old- 
time footscrapers, of which many are still to be 

112 



OLD SECTIONS OF THE CITY 

found, old ones, fine old ones, within the heart of the 
old portion of the city, built into the sidewalk at the 
foot of the house steps. 

A pair of winged grifSns, back to back, lion-pawed, 
very strong, particularly pictorial, are near Third 
and Buttonwood streets. In numerous places there 
are the old curled-ear, wrought-iron scrapers, of the 
blacksmith's handiwork. On South Third Street I 
remember a scraper with classic urn above a hooped- 
over top; and not far away, on the same street, is 
one of almost the same design, except that the 
hooped-over top is taller and more slender. 

The admirable designs and the variety, make these 
old Philadelphia foot-scrapers extremely worth 
while. An interesting scraper on Walnut Street, is 
another of the hooped-top kind, made by some un- 
known Peter Visscher of an iron worker, with eight 
wrought-iron curls upon it which must have de- 
lighted the artisan's heart and which are a delight 
to look at to-day. Another on Walnut Street is 
curiously made, with a wrought rosette on either 
side. A pair of very old ones form a pair of brac- 
ings for the bottom of the iron balusters of the steps 
in front of a house on Pine Street. 

These are but examples. The number of old 
scrapers still remaining is large and the proportion 
of interesting ones is great. And these lowly 
examples of early artisanship are worthy of search 
and examination. 

There is still a great deal of fine old wrought- 
iron work that is more prominent than the scrapers. 

113 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

There are lovely old iron rails at front doorsteps, 
many of them with the classic palmette, one of the 
things which so often make architects refer to things of 
old-time Philadelphia, little or big, as ''pure Greek." 

Everywhere is the interesting. There are ador- 
able little curving marble steps, ironrailed, rising 
rather steeply to the doorways; and when they are 
in pairs, converging to a center, these are house-door 
approaches of great distinction. There are fan- 
lights, there are pent-eaves, there are pilasters at 
many a door, and here and there one still may see 
an old-time knocker. And it is sorrowful to see such 
a proportion of the old made squalid and sodden by 
ill-usage. And the squalid so frequently merges 
into the mere shabby, and alternates with it, that one 
is constantly liable to confound the two qualities. 
There are many decent and decorous people living 
on what at first glance seem altogether dirty and 
deplorable streets; and there is still much of ex- 
cellent and prosperous business carried on in 
shabby old buildings. 

It is curious, yet one sees how natural it was, that 
coming to a new country with infinite open space 
usable, Penn should have planned his new city with 
many of the streets as narrow as if they were in the 
close-cramped, walled-in cities of old Europe. He 
probably thought that he was giving the streets, on 
the average, great spaciousness. But his rectangu- 
lar plan, besides marking out most of the streets 
with what we deem narrowness, marked also a 
system of alleys behind all of the streets. They are 

114 



OLD SECTIONS OF THE CITY 

still alleys, although in this finical age they are called 
streets. And, ill-kept though most of them are, they 
still show, especially two or three running westward 
from the Delaware Eiver water-front, just north of 
Market Street, how pleasantly people of moderate 
means used to live, in these little old houses, still 
standing, of two-stories and an attic; houses with 
dormer windows, with projective pent-eaves between 
the first and second stories, and each with its little 
doorstep and its solid shutters. 

Originally, the idea frankly was that the less well to 
do should frankly accept these less desirable locations, 
and live in these small houses in the narrow alleys; 
and the intent also was to make these inferior homes 
really homelike ; and in those early days they were. 

Numbers of these old alleys — and the system of 
alleys extended with the extension of the city — are 
still without sewage connection, even behind some 
of the fashionable and wealthy streets, and behind 
prosperous streets of modern business; and until 
recently there were many more. Some of these old 
alleys are mediaeval in suggestion; both evil and 
mediaeval in unsanitariness, in narrowness, in their 
rough cobbled paving, in their sharp grading toward 
the gutter in the center of the roadway; a gutter 
which is in some alleys the only sewer. Such places 
as the worst of these, with the narrower alley en- 
trances and the loss of light and ventilation for the 
homes, are paralleled nowhere else in America, and 
nowhere in England except in dismal Sheffield or 
some other duke-owned city. The rent roll of great 

115 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

estates that own the alley properties gives the ex- 
planation there, and presumably the same explana- 
tion holds to a great extent here; yet assuredly not 
in all cases. 

Numbers of these narrow alleys are still close- 
packed with human life, and in grim correlation, 
human death; and you may still pick out, here and 
there, a crowded alley, extremely dirty, with the ter- 
rible record of its deaths during the yellow fever 
scourge of 1793 still kept in mind. 

In one of these alleys, into which Doctor Eush 
and Stephen Girard and a few other brave men 
penetrated during those yellow fever days, freely 
risking their own lives, tirelessly tending the sick 
and carrying out the dead on their shoulders, in one 
of these alleys, now called Spring Street, leading 
westward from Front Street, a little north of 
Market, an alley of smells, of roadways uncommonly 
rough, of small houses, of doddering roof lines and 
ancient gables, the impression of being set far back 
into the past comes with curious force. The alley 
is really among the very oldest and tradition has it 
that some of the little houses here have been stand- 
ing for over two centuries, and that to one of them 
Benjamin Franklin came, as a youth, on his arrival 
from Boston, and in this house rented a room, and 
made his first home in Philadelphia. It is one of 
the unsanitary alleys. It does not run through the 
block from street to street, but makes a sudden turn 
to the right, and ends abruptly in this right-angled 
offshoot; and m this little offshoot is the old house. 

116 



OLD SECTIONS OF THE CITY 

And it is a pleasure to see that it is pridefully kept 
up. It has a brass knocker, and still retains what 
many a rich house would envy it, one of those ancient 
bull's-eyes which are year by year growing more rare. 

There is an undoubted charm about this. The 
houses themselves are surprisingly clean and attrac- 
tive, also, as you suddenly notice. In fact, it is a 
place of contradictions. And although you still see 
features which you would fain see bettered, there 
has been a marked holding up of standards along this 
entire right-angled cul-de-sac. And you find that 
the properties here are not owned by rich men or 
by estates, but are individually owned, and mostly 
by that vanishing race, the Americans, or by old- 
time Irish, who, in these days of Southern European 
inundation, seem markedly American. 

There does not seem to be much actual basis for 
the Franklin tradition, yet it seems reasonable. 
Much of tlie soundest history is necessarily based 
upon tradition. And in this case I am inclined to ac- 
cept the tradition because of a touch of verisimili- 
tude, a homely, human touch, which is,' that it is still 
traditionally held that Franklin used to go from here 
to the then much nearer riverside, and plunge in and 
take long swims. 

Franklin used to be a mighty swimmer, and he 
exulted in his physical prowess; and as life went 
on, and he acquired medal after medal of honor, from 
monarchs and societies and public assemblies, for 
this or that achievement in science or statecraft, a 
story told of another Philadelphian, also a writer, 

117 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

might have been put upon him with a different appli- 
cation. For this modern Philadelphian writer, 
Eichard Harding Davis, in the desire to make an 
effect at some formal reception, pinned across his 
breast several medals received for achievements in 
war correspondence or other experiences, whereupon 
George Ade approached and, running his finger 
along the line of medals, touching each as if in awe, 
to the increasing pleasure of the wearer, said at 
length, with gentle questioning, *' Swimming?" 

Near this probable Franklin locality is one tliat is 
associated with Washington. For at the southeast 
corner of Front and Market streets — the buildings 
now standing thereabouts, although not new, are not 
of Eevolutionary era, and the general aspect has 
also considerably changed through the filling in and 
pushing out of the waterfront — ^to that corner, 
Washington made a daily habit of going, when he 
lived in Philadelphia as President of the United 
States; twelve o'clock was the usual hour, and he 
would stand, watch in hand, for a moment, compar- 
ing his watch with the clock in the window of the 
clockdealer who then occupied this corner. He was 
always immaculately dressed; for it was a deep- 
based belief with him that a man owes it to himself 
and to his position in life to dress with care, and he 
felt this the more deeply at a time when he knew that 
his appearance and personal bearing were of vital im- 
portance to a new and struggling nation, in giving it 
place in the eyes of the world. And it is also still 
remembered, for tradition has brought it down, that 

118 



OLD SECTIONS OF THE CITY 

the porters of the then immediate waterside always 
took off their hats when he came and stood uncov- 
ered till he walked away, and that he always lifted 
his own hat in recognition. 

Washington, in those Presidential days of Phila- 
delphia, lived in a fine house on the south side of 
Market Street between Fifth and Sixth streets. It 
was in that house, long since vanished before the 
march of business, that he received the terrible news 
of St. Clair's defeat; maintaining calm during the 
dinner party that was in progress when the message 
came, then giving way briefly to wild grief and in- 
dignation. It was in that house that Alexander 
Hamilton, on the day on which he resigned his post 
as Secretary of the Treasury, picked up a copy of 
the Constitution of the United States, and said: 
**So long as we are a young and virtuous people, 
this instrument will bind us together in mutual in- 
terests, mutual welfare, and mutual happiness; but 
when we become old and corrupt it will bind us no 
longer." For the wise men of early days well knew 
that there were possibilities of disaster which the 
Constitution, unless backed by the devotion of the 
country, would be powerless to check. It was in that 
house that Gouverneur Morris tested his bet that he 
could be successful in treating Washington famil- 
iarly, which nobody had ever done; and so, here it 
was that, at dinner table, he patted the President on 
the shoulder and said, *'01d gentleman, do you be- 
lieve that?" — only to be crushed into abjection by 
Washington's silent look. (Once, at a gathering in 

119 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

Virginia, where Wasliington was in the habit of meet- 
ing his neighbors as a fellow farmer, it was agreed be- 
forehand that the custom into which they had fallen, 
of rising at his entrance, be discontinued, and that all 
keep their seats ; but the very moment that he entered, 
and glanced about the room, every man arose.) 

The landlord and neighbor of Washington, on 
Market Street, was Eobert Morris; and Morris sold 
these holdings to put his money into what was to be 
the grandest of all Philadelphia mansions. He 
bought the entire block, between Chestnut and Walnut 
streets, and Seventh and Eighth, and there put such 
vast sums of money into his new house as utterly to 
ruin him. The house was never completed; before 
long it was destroyed for business advancement; 
and it had an extraordinary quantity of underground 
structure, with cellars and tunnels and walls and 
arches; and portions of these underground or semi- 
underground constructions are still existent and 
from time to time cause puzzled inquiry. 

Another Morris house, at 225 South Eighth Street, 
between Walnut and Spruce, built in 1786, may fairly 
be deemed the best example remaining of the old-time 
excellent town dwelling house of wealth and beauty. 
Though far from being so old as some, it is of pre- 
Revolutionary style, and is a broad-fronted building, 
admirably proportioned, with excellent door and 
dormers, with windows twenty-four paned and 
wooden-shuttered; and it contains, as do so many of 
the houses of this city, a great quantity of old furni- 
ture and old china. It is known as the Morris house, 

120 



OLD SECTIONS OF THE CITY 

and has for some generations been owned by a Morris 
family; but, as with the so-called Morris house of 
Germanto^vn, it was not built by a Morris nor was it 
owned by a Morris during the most interesting years 
of its existence. It stands — an unusual condition for 
that part of the city — with a garden space on either 
side of it. 

And this is remindful of that altogether charming 
old house, lovingly known as the ** Yellow Mansion," 
which until a few years ago stood, garden-surrounded 
and tree-shaded, in square-fronted serenity, at Broad 
and Walnut streets. 

The early builders were fortunate in their age, for 
it was an age when it was hard to build unattractively ; 
it was an age of largely unconscious devotion to 
beauty; these old-time Philadelphians builded better 
than they knew, their conscious stone to beauty grew 
— only the poets ''stone" must here be rendered 
*' brick." A universal sense of beauty was diffused, 
and that is why the Colonial houses of America, 
or those built near that time and following those 
ideals, are such models of taste. And it is most 
satisfactory to find so many of the most beautiful ones 
still preserved. 

To seek out the best examples in the old parts of 
the city, go if possible on Sunday. On weekdays the 
streets are jammed and cluttered, and there is a roar 
and thunder of traffic, and you see nothing but the 
heavy motor-trucks as you cross the streets and the 
crowded sidewalks as you walk, every moment bump- 
ing or bumped if your attention strays from your 

121 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

stepping. But on Sunday the entire old-time district 
is open and deserted, with scarcely a vehicle, scarcely 
any people on the sidewalks. Every old house is 
recognizable. You see every worth-while gable and 
doorway and cornice. On weekdays, you think there 
is nothing there to see ; on Sundays you realize what 
a very great deal remains. 

On South Ninth Street, at No. 260, there are Kingly 
instead of Presidential memories; for in this house, 
gray-plastered outside, with its end to the street, with 
a little portico, with a bow-front of wrought-iron, with 
wistaria clambering about, there lived for a time a 
man who called himself Comte de Survilliers, but it 
was no secret that he was really Joseph Bonaparte, 
formerly King of Spain. The house still contains 
some fine old furniture of his time, including two fine 
Empire sofas, and there is a great room still papered 
with the scenic paper which was on the walls when he 
lived here, with lovely classic scenes in such soft color- 
ings as now to have become practically black and white. 

At the northeast corner of Fourth and Arch streets 
stands an old house, built about 1760, of much dignity 
and excellent lines; a house of three stories and a 
dormered attic, and with the line of the front cornice 
continuing on the side of the house along the base 
of the gable. And it has long been regarded as the 
home of the first provost of the University of Penn- 
sylvania, William Smith ; although recently some have 
claimed that his house was in reality the old house 
on the diagonally opposite corner. 

A distinguished man was Provost Smith, a peppery 

122 



OLD SECTIONS OF THE CITY 

irascible man, besides being a man of dignity and 
learning; and when lie was put into jail for some 
months through a dispute with the Colonial Assembly, 
charged with having assisted a Judge Moore in the 
preparation of an obnoxious pamphlet, he used his 
time to excellent advantage, addressing with perfect 
composure and even nonchalance his classes, who 
gathered outside of the jail window, and becoming 
weU acquainted with, and engaged to, the daughter 
of his fellow prisoner. Judge Moore, and marrying 
her shortly after his release. To clear his name, he 
then voyaged to England, and secured a royal order 
condenming in severe terms the unwarranted impris- 
onment; an order which was quite annoying in its 
effects, however, when the Eevolution came and made 
royal favoritism unpopular ! 

A son of his marriage with Judge Moore's daughter 
Rebecca (Rebecca was a favorite name with early 
Philadelphians) had a daughter who as a little girl 
was given a calf for a pet ; and when, like other calves, 
it grew to cowhood, the British, who had by that time 
attained the occupancy of Philadelphia and its im- 
mediate vicinity, captured it. This granddaughter of 
the Provost learned that the raiding troopers were 
of the division of Lord Comwallis and so to the 
British camp she made her way, and was led to the 
general's tent. She was only some thirteen years of 
age, but demanded earnestly that her pet cow be re- 
stored. The general looked at her genially, but asked 
if she had no father or brother who could have ap- 
pealed in her behalf, whereupon the little girl bravely 

123 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

replied that her father was then in a military prison 
in Philadelphia and that her brothers were with the 
Continental army. And at this Cornwallis, with all 
military courtesy, ordered that her cow be driven back 
and, as the girl thanked him and turned to leave, he 
handed her a little trinket, expressing the hope that 
she would pleasantly keep in mind a British officer. 

Little Letitia Street used to be notable from its pos- 
session of what was known as the ''Letitia house"; 
some years ago removed to Fairmount Park and now 
known as the ''Penn house"; it being, supposedly, a 
house built by William Penn, and probably for his 
daughter Letitia. The house as it stands is not as 
old as the style of Penn's time, unless it has been 
somewhat altered ; and it cannot now be learned, with 
certainty, precisely whether or not this was the 
veritable house after all. When people forget, deeds 
are the only evidence, and deeds, after all, give only 
land boundaries ; and when a deed covers a tract con- 
taining several houses it is anybody's guess just which 
is some particularly sought-for house, or what is the 
age of a house, except so far as certain indications are 
usually evident as to this latter point. 

Letitia Street has an undoubted association of an- 
other 'kind, one which shows that human nature is 
always essentially the same. At a little inn, long ago 
established in Letitia Street, and long since gone, a 
young man one day appeared and announced that he 
had sold himself to the devil, who was to come on a 
near-at-hand day and seize him, unless he could raise 
redemption money. The people were so impressed by 

124 



OLD SECTIONS OF THE CITY 

his plausible plight that they actually raised the 
money, and on the fateful day came with it and placed 
it on a table in the middle of the room at the inn, and 
then prayed; the number of ministers present being 
three. But, ''The devil! The devil at the window!" 
suddenly cried the young man, interrupting the fer- 
vent prayers. At which everybody fled in wildest panic. 
And when, after a while, a few crept hesitatingly back, 
the young man, and of course the money, had gone. 

One of the prettiest stories of old Philadelphia is 
connected with one of the smallest of the ancient 
houses of the city, still standing on Arch Street, be- 
tween Second and Third. And the most delightful 
thing about the delightful story is the fact that Phila- 
delphians are ready to fight, instantly and fiercely, if 
you speak of the story as true ! — a story which a city 
of different idiosyncrasies would gladly grasp for it- 
self. But there is a reason for this. For years, the 
story was so sentimentalized, so intensely oversenti- 
mentalized, in pictures and descriptions, as to give a 
disagreeable flavor. And, too, there was at one time 
some financial exploitation which touched the city's 
pride. 

The actual story is sweet and homely. Elizabeth 
Ross, Betsey Ross, the widow of John Ross, a nephew 
of one of the Signers, supported herself for a time 
as a lace cleaner and by carrying on the business of 
her husband, who had been an upholsterer or "up- 
holder," as the word was in those days. She did not 
long remain the Widow Ross, for a soldier named 
Ashburn married her, and after he was captured and 

125 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

died a prisoner in England, she was married again, 
this time to one Claypole, understood to be a descend- 
ant of Cromwell. 

Congress, in Jmie of 1777, voted for a flag of thir- 
teen stripes, alternate red and white, with thirteen 
stars, white in a blue field. Washington was in 
Philadelphia at the time, over from New York on 
military business, and the committee which was ap- 
pointed by Congress to carry out the idea consulted 
with him. He knew Mrs. Ross. She had cared for 
his lace cuffs, he knew her as a self-respecting, self- 
supporting woman, and he led the committee to her 
house. Under their eyes, Mrs. Ross cut and stitched, 
and soon the flag lay before them, the first of our 
Stars and Stripes ! 

There is no official record of her making that first 
flag. No importance was attached to the matter. To 
Betsey Ross it was merely, as we nowadays should 
say, ''all in the day's work'*; to the committee, and 
to Washington, it was just a matter of finding the 
best woman for the work. Philadelphians say that 
had it been Betsey Ross some claim would have been 
made earlier. But whoever it was that made that 
first flag made no claim earlier ! And those who 
doubt that Betsey did it, have no one else to suggest. 

Old records, although none have been found refer- 
ring to that first flag, show that Mrs. Ross was 
afterwards given considerable work by the Govern- 
ment as a maker of flags and colors, one single pay- 
ment for some ship's colors being fourteen pounds 
and twelve shillings. There are traces, for years, of 

126 



OLD SECTIONS OF THE CITY 



her having won her place as a maker of national flags ; 
and she was a woman of some substance, and of 
recognized position in business, in an age when 
women in business were rare. 

At the time of the Centennial, in 1876, when every- 
thing Revolutionary assumed, in Philadelphia, new 
and great prominence, a grandson of Betsey Ross told 
of the flag-making, saying that when he was a boy of 
eleven, his grandmother, then Mrs. Claypole, told in 
his hearing the story of the making of that first 
American flag, under the very eye of General Wash- 
ington. And at any rate, the very idea is picturesque, 
of the scene, that day, in the little low-ceilinged room 
of that tiny Arch Street house. 




CHAPTER IX 



STREETS AND WAYS 




HERE is a stationary- 
quality noticeable in Phila- 
delphia's population more 
than in other cities. In 
Boston, although many of 
the wealthy and prominent, 
the people of ''family," still live 
in the same district, the same 
streets, the same houses, of long 
ago, there is little of this per- 
manence with the other classes. 
In such newer great cities as Cleveland one will find 
conservative families established in four successive 
homes in one generation, caused by "changing neigh- 
borhoods." In Philadelphia, however, people of all 
classes continue year after year, generation after 
generation, to live in the same houses. And it is a 
distinctive feature of the city, that the people are 
proud of their own districts. The people of Dia- 
mond Street are as proud of Diamond Street as the 
people of Rittenhouse Square are proud of Ritten- 
house Square. 

There are no "blocks" in Philadelphia street 



nomenclature. The 



term 
128 



'block" is unknown. 



STEEETS AND WAYS 

There are ** squares," to express street spaces be- 
tween cross-streets. I one day heard a Philadel- 
phian naively wondering, having heard a New 
Yorker refer to a ''block," whether that word had 
come to New Yorkers from the fact that Adrian 
Block was an important figure in early New York 
life. 

One takes easily to the use of ''squares" in this 
city from the fact that the city was laid out by Penn 
in literal squares; the streets are primly precise, 
crossing one another at severe right angles ; this un- 
swerving checker-board severity, however, being re- 
lieved by the diagonal lines of a few avenues which 
cut across the city on the bias. One sees in the 
plan of the city, in its impression of gentle rigidity, 
an indication of the very spirit of Quakerism. 
There is a pleasing satisfactoriness in the way in 
which the city is laid out; and there comes the 
memory of the argument between the Philadelphian 
and the New Yorker as to the merits of their re- 
spective cities, and of how the Philadelphian, driven 
to anger by his opponent's continued impervious- 
ness, at length cried triumphantly, "But at least you 
must admit that Philadelphia is well laid out I" To 
which the New Yorker, "I knew that Philadelphia 
was dead but I did not know it was laid out I" Ah, 
well — those many, many jests on Philadelphia ! — And 
how calmly Philadelphia goes on her important way, 
ignoring them! And yet, when a certain line of 
stories continues to develop, with additional similar 
stories developing, for generations, there must be 

129 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

some ground for them. And the ground seems to be 
a certain content that is inherent in the average Phil- 
adelphian'fe character or temperament. But content 
is a pleasant tiling to get along with, and is one of 
the qualities which go to the making up of the de- 
lightful Philadelphia type. 

The quality of content has made for the continued 
uniformity of streets and houses and looks and 
manners; very pleasing, all this, interesting and un- 
usual. For forty years, so Philadelphians will tell 
you, the quarrymen of Burlington, Vermont, sup- 
plied the white marble steps and copings for Phila- 
delphia buildings, large and small ; what a contented 
continuity of trade ! And they will add that no Bur- 
lington man ever lost a cent by a Philadelphia bad 
debt! 

Yet contentment may have its bad side. In 
speaking, with a newspaper editor, of the street car 
system which makes eight cents the fare for most 
of the people, with what those from other cities 
deem poor service, he laughed contentedly and said, 
"But I own street railway stock!" And a lawyer 
who had been made a member of a commission to 
investigate tuberculosis conditions told me that he 
found conditions so bad, in the district assigned to 
him, that his report was quietly suppressed. 

One of the street railway executives, at a dinner 
with a party of about a score, spoke of an intended 
car that was to be without possibility of ventila- 
tion. ''And if the public object we'll put the cars 
on anyhow!" he exclaimed. But this was not really 

130 



STEEETS AND WAYS 

so defiant as it seemed. He knew tliat Pliiladel- 
pliians, rich and poor, did not like ventilation, even 
though they may indulge, contradictorily, in open- 
air sleeping at home. For even the open-air sleeper, 
the moment he enters a trolley or railway car, in 
cold or even cool weather, desires every particle of 
fresh air shut out. Even business offices, and 
private homes, yes, even doctors' offices, are kept 
to the same general standard. When, as a war 
measure, it was proposed to have no heat in the street 
cars, but to let them be heated entirely by the animal 
heat of the passengers, it impressed the city as an 
obviously excellent thing to do. 

There is a sort of cynical frankness here, as to the 
power of the powerful, that I have not noticed else- 
where in such degree. And those Tvho suffer from 
the powerful feel but a sense of fatalism. "Allah 
is great!" — Allah being the man with money. 

In the matter of street cars, the company acts on 
the knowledge that the class who would naturally 
be the powerful objectors ride in their o^ai motors, 
or walk from railway station to office, or from their 
homes to their offices. Philadelphia, curiously, for 
■so large a city, is so built as to permit of doing with- 
out trolley cars on the part of a host of people. 
With marvelous convenience, the railroads have 
placed their stations in the heart of the city, so that 
commuters may walk to their places of business. 
And the most active business area is so small as to 
cover only walkable distances. And a great number 
of fine homes and a still greater number of more 

131 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

ordinary homes, are within walkable distance from 
offices, from the shopping district, and from the 
theaters. 

The sense of content, in the city, of satisfaction 
with things because they are Philadelphian, becomes 
naturally a sense of patience ; also a heritage of the 
Quakers. And never was there a city so patient. I 
have seen a packed trolley-load of people, a carload 
so tight-packed that there was not another inch of 
standing room, turned out on a windy corner, with 
the thermometer hovering around zero, for that car 
to be smtched off and returned, while the people 
waited under the command of ''Next car!" And 
there was not a word, not a symptom, of protest, or 
even of impatience or anger. The next car came, 
and it was itself so jammed that only a few of the 
people standing in the icy wind could board it. 
Still, not a word or an indication of resentment ! 

And I remember one recent cold morning last 
winter, at Germantown station, quite a group wait- 
ing for a train which was behind time. In the first 
place, no one thought of taking a street car. These 
were commuters who had day after day taken the 
train, and a custom must not be broken. Nor did 
any one telephone for a taxicab, although every man 
and woman had the appearance of being amply able 
to afford many taxicabs, and although it was presum- 
ably important for m.ost of these well-to-do folk to 
get to their destinations. Time was not made for 
Philadelphians. They would wait. I waited too ; in 
gathering impressions for this book it would never 

132 



STREETS AND WAYS 

have done to desert those patient people. They 
waited for over an hour, without a single effort 
on the part of a single individual to find some other 
method of getting away, and without the slightest 
sign or word of impatience. And this, not from self- 
control, for they did not feel either anger or worry; 
they did not feel impatience. There was every in- 
dication that they would patiently stay there till 
going-home time, if necessary, and that then they 
would, with a mild sense of duty done, just go home. 
When, after the wait of over an hour, the train was 
seen rounding a curve, there was not the faintest 
sign of relief or interest, and the people boarded it 
just as if it had come in on time. 

But one need not dwell on the overdevelopment 
of content, except so far as to point out how it lies 
at the root of the city's characteristics, and that it 
could be traced out curiously in various develop- 
ments. 

The typical Philadelphian is neat, well-groomed, 
precise, even immaculate. And the women are ad- 
mirably gowned, good looking, many of them pretty 
or even positively beautiful. The average is higher 
in the good looks of women than in any other 
city that I know, whether in Europe or America. 
Thackeray referred to them as the ** pretty Quaker- 
esses ' ' ; but Chestnut Street, on a sunny winter after- 
noon, does not nowadays precisely suggest Quaker- 
esses. 

One of the points that marks that this city has 
traits of the nearby South is that you will see 

133 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

negroes, in bitter weather, wrap up their feet in huge 
bundles of burlap or old carpeting, and thus stumble 
about, with ragged coats pinned across their chests 
and turned up toward their ears. 

The real Philadelphian, however, and now I mean 
the typical white Philadelphian, has an almost in- 
superable aversion to giving way, in outward appear- 
ance, to cold, and even on bitter cold days does not 
even turn up the collar of his overcoat ; his aversion 
to doing this amounting almost to personal inhibi- 
tion. It simply isn't done, in Philadelphia; and if 
it isn't done, the Philadelphian, whether of north or 
south of Market Street, does not do it. But stoic 
as he is in the matter of his coat collar in a snow 
storm, it seems to be quite proper to put on a little 
pair of funny velvet ear-muffs ! 

In the shops or in advertisements, one never meets 
with ** Bargains." The very word gives the Phila- 
delphian a cold shock. There may be *' special 
sales," however, and there is the lure of ** reduc- 
tions," which the most exclusive shop can offer with- 
out loss of caste. Yet the word "bargains," so dis- 
liked by Penn's present-day successors, was used by 
Penn himself. On the same ship with him, in coming 
over, was a man named Duche, ancestor of the rector 
of that name, and Penn borrowed thirty pounds of 
him. On landing, and looking over the new city's 
site, Penn offered Duche a fine space in the very 
heart of expected development, in lieu of the money 
as actual money was scarce; it would have been a 
** bargain," wrote Penn; and he also, in writing 

134 



STEEETS AND WAYS 

down that Duche refused the ''bargain" and wanted 
the money instead, called Duche the very un-Quaker- 
like name of ''blockhead"; which the over-cautious 
man was himself soon ready to admit that he was. 

Early Philadelphia showed its love for trees by 
giving tree names to the principal east and west 
streets of the city, as Chestnut, Walnut, Spruce, 
Pine, Locust, Cedar, Filbert, Mulberry, Sassafras; 
and most of these names have been retained. 

It has ill-naturedly been said that Philadelphia is 
as narrow as her streets ; but in reality she is a city 
of imagination. Surely, none but a city of sweep- 
ing breadth of outlook could put up such a sign as is 
placed at one of the busiest corners, that of Broad 
and Walnut; it is a signpost, marking the points 
to the westward, and only two cities are named; 
Lancaster, practically a suburb — and San Francisco ! 

The city is good. It frankly admits this, and be- 
lieves it. To be sure, some Philadelphians, goaded 
by the complacent claims of their own city, have 
called it "corrupt and content"; which is, however, 
quite too severe. The contentment is basic, tempera- 
mental, inescapable, and apparently not very bad 
in results, with much that is resultantly pleasant; 
and as to being corrupt, it is merely that the city 
is about like other cities. She became accustomed, 
years ago, to a political control which (I say this in 
all seriousness and from considerable knowledge) 
out-Tammanyed Tammany; and her self-styled "re- 
formers" have been neither better nor worse than 
' ' reformers * ' elsewhere. 

135 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

In view of the present-day eagerness for public 
office it is curious to note that it was only some 
quarter of a century before the Eevolution that two 
men, in one year, elected in turn to the mayoralty, 
refused in turn to serve, and were each fined the 
sum of thirty pounds for such neglect of civic duty. 
And two or three years after this, although mean- 
while a salary of one hundred pounds was attached to 
the office, a man elected to the office disappeared and 
kept out of sight, his wife merely declaring that he 
was away from home, mitil another man was elected 
and installed. 

From the earliest days, Philadelphia has officially 
recognized offenses against the law, although the at- 
titude of the people has been that crime does not 
exist. There was a time when a man would be fined 
twelve pennies if he smoked in the public street; 
showing what a height of civic virtue was attained; 
and old records tell of a butcher who was punished 
as a ''common swearer" because of ''swearing three 
oaths in the market-place, and uttering two very bad 
curses." Could criminal record be more delight- 
fully naive! But even at that, curiosity is balked, 
for the "two very bad curses" are not given in the 
record. 

In the first year of Philadelphia's life, in 1682, it 
was ordered that a "cage" be built, "seven feet long 
by five feet broad," for lawbreakers: assuredly, nar- 
row quarters ! and the scenes around the stocks and 
pillories of the early years were not edifying. 

The laws of Pennsylvania have always had odd 

136 



STEEETS AND WAYS 

quirks, hence the colloquial references to a "Phila- 
delphia lawyer"; and landlord and tenant laws are 
unusual. For rent due, the landlord is given power 
to levy upon not only the personal property of the 
tenant but upon that of a tenant or even a guest I 
If the tenant takes away his own property, while 
owing rent, he is guilty of theft. At least, ''Phila- 
delphia lawyers" tell of these things, and they tell, 
too, strange stories of "ground rents" lying mys- 
teriously hidden under many a lease, ready to arise 
and remain an incubus forever. 

The police of to-day, on the whole, are a capable- 
seeming set of men, with somewhat more of lack of 
discipline or lack of appearance of discipline than 
is customary elsewhere. It is not unusual to see a 
policeman lounging against a w^all; in hot weather 
I have seen them sitting on the front steps of 
shuttered homes. 

Philadelphians have so much of both manner and 
manners, that the negroes who live here, and there 
are great numbers of them, imitatively have also a 
higher than usual average of manner and manners, 
and indeed of general conduct, for in no other city 
is the standard of the negroes so high, especially of 
those who are house servants, ofifice employees, ele- 
vator operators, and such classes. 

The newsboys of the city have terribly raucous 
voices, and this comes from their fighting against 
the noises of the streets, and in particular the noise 
of trolleys. For the trolleys crash through the nar- 
row business streets, high-walled by buildings on 

137 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

either side, with terrific thundering, banging, clang- 
ing, grinding sounds, excruciatingly terrible. 

Slang, except now and then some selected word 
for a special occasion, is not necessary to the speech 
of the better-class Philadelphian. He has his own 
phrases, however, and it is typically Philadelphian 
to begin a sentence, **My thought is — ." He is 
rather particular as to his speech, yet his particular- 
ity does not smack of the schoolroom; but now and 
then you may even hear the Oxford pronunciation 
of physiognomy, *'fizzi-on-yu-mi." Once or so in a 
lifetime you will hear, what you will never hear in 
any other American city and rarely in England away 
from the tower of Magdalen, the pronunciation of 
** Deuteronomy" with long **o's" and with the accent 
on the next to the last syllable. 

The Philadelphian dislike of the simple word 
**the" is among the curious manifestations of the 
city. There are two sets of city council; what may 
be termed the upper and the lower houses; but 
Philadelphia never refers to **the councils"; no 
Philadelphian could by possibility do so. It is 
always just one word, ''councils"; and ''councils" 
do not meet in the City Hall, huge building though 
it is. No. It is always "City Hall," without the 
*'the." I do not know why or how this can be. I 
put it down as among those unexplainable facts 
which travelers notice, in Europe or Asia or in 
Pennsylvania. And, as a rule, although not with 
absolute uniformity of usage, a man does not have 
his money in the bank; it is "in bank." 

138 



STREETS AND WAYS 

There is no *' Union League Club" here, as there 
is in New York, and other cities, for, with recogni- 
tion of correctness, it is just the ** Union League." 
It is a typical Philadelphia pronunciation to give 
"hospitable," a word much used in this extremely 
hospitable city, with the accent, oddly and markedly, 
on the ''spit." Great numbers of Philadelphians, 
although in this case not the most careful speakers, 
'refer to the ' ' rad-iators " on the front of their motor- 
cars, and to the ''shock-abzorbers" (with a "z" 
sound!) on the rear axle. 

There is not the variety of odd street signs that 
one expects to see in an old city; but one is amused 
by such a baker's announcement as "The Cake that 
made Mother stop Baking." The oldest confec- 
tioner of the city still displays the good old-fashioned 
word, "Sweets." There are still such reminders of 
the past as, "goat, sheep and deer skins." I noticed 
on the front of a mansion that had been given over 
to the use of the Naval Auxiliary of the Red Cross, 
in the very heart and center of Philadelphia's exclu- 
siveness, on Rittenhouse Square, the sign, without 
saving punctuation, "Parcels and Packages received 
here for the Men of our Navy weighing less than 100 
pounds." 

Though a city with a reputation for slowness, one 
notices an unusual number of places where clothes 
are pressed or shoes mended "while you wait." 
But, of course, this does not tell how long you may be 
expected to wait! 

Butchers are still known as "licensed victualers." 

139 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

One gets the impression of an unusual number of 
bird-seed stores and of places where dogs and other 
small animals are sold. There are many more 
opticians, proportionately, than in other cities, and I 
have heard Philadelphians themselves explain this 
by the city's constant contrast of red brick and white 
marble. There is more than the usual number of 
shoe stores, because Philadelphians walk more than 
the people of most American cities, their homes and 
railway stations being so near the center. 

Perhaps Franklin unconsciously set the supposed 
Philadelphia standard, in the matter of sleep, by 
promptly falling asleep, the very first day he was in 
the city, in the first building that he entered, which 
happened to be a meeting-house. It is still a city 
that is delightfully dormered; there are dormer 
windows, in the older portions, in every direction; 
and one may readily fancy a connection between 
*' dormer" and sleep; although, for many people it 
would be amusingly sufficient, as a proof of sleepi- 
ness, to say that the city actually maintains a number 
of cricket clubs ! 

It is a city that goes to bed early and the "twelve 
o'clock visitor in a nine o'clock town" is frequent. 
In the older residence streets, those which still have 
solid shutters, you will hear the resonant bang of 
shutter after shutter, shortly after eight. The dog 
is either turned out or called in, according to the 
kind of owner, and then the houses are black. This 
is, however, to some degree deceptive, as the old- 
fashioned sitting-room is up one flight and at the 

140 



STREETS AND WAYS 

rear of the house; but even so, the hours are gen- 
erally early for a big city. 

Naturally, an idiosyncratic city develops some 
idiosyncratic people; and one of the Philadelphia 
judges is blessed with so careful a wife that she has 
all the family silver carried to her room, for safe- 
keeping, every night; and friends (it is always 
friends!) say that the distinguished judge often 
pounds furiously on the breakfast table, impatiently 
waiting for the so very carefully guarded silver to 
appear. 

Over and over, one comes back to the subtle satis- 
fied something that is written on the Philadelphia 
face. *'Smug," says one visitor. They ** never 
bristle," says Henry James. *'I can always tell 
what city a man comes from" — ^you remember the 
old story — working around to, *'Now, you are from 
Philadelphia," and the indignant, **No, I'm not! 
IVe been sick for a month and that's why I look that 
way!" 

I think the feeling comes, first, from the inherited 
spirit of non-resistance, and secondly from the sense 
of conscious regularity which comes from living 
among severely regular streets and regular number- 
ings. 

Streets at right angles, numbered in numerical 
succession, and precisely one hundred numbers to a 
block; the streets north of Market just the same as 
south of Market with the differentiating *' North" or 
** South" in referring to them — this alone must have 
a tremendous effect on the mental makeup of the 

141 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

people. Direct a man to, say, 2020 South Twentieth 
Street, and he knows that he must go twenty squares 
south on the twentieth street from the Delaware 
Kiver. 

I happened to read, in an English book, a few 
days ago, of an American, in London, who was under 
suspicion of giving a false name and address, because 
he gave it as **One thousand one hundred and ninety- 
one, Walnut Street, Philadelphia;'^ obviously an in- 
vention, to the British mind (though one really does 
not see why) ; till a traveled Englislmian remarked 
that there really was such a street in Philadelphia 
and that, as it was at least ten miles in length, it 
might possibly reach that numbering. As a matter 
of fact, it reaches the number within less than two 
miles. 

This regularity operates, too, to hold people close 
to the customary. They go precisely to the places 
where they have always gone, to see the things they 
have always seen. They rarely leave the beaten 
path; which is why, after all, most of them do not 
follow that of the primrose. I was told, one day, 
by the head of a prominent house, that numbers of 
his employees who live out Germantown way had 
never been in West Philadelphia and that numbers 
of his West Philadelphian employees had never seen 
Germantown. And a member of an active woman's 
club told me that her fellow members came from 
"the ends of the earth," at which I expressed in- 
terest, feeling that with allowance for unintentioned 
exaggeration, at least Bristol and Chester were 

142 



STREETS AND WAYS 

meant, only to find that it was deemed marvelous 
to have one or two from Camden and Manaynnk. 

No other city presents, in its sidewalks, so many 
pitfalls to the unwary, with stone steps projecting, 
and blocks of marble at the curb, and open basement 
stairs, and trees in the middle of the sidewalks even 
on Broad Street. The Glasgow admonition to its 
public, of ''Gang warily'^ ought to be printed, with 
the Glasgow addendum of the reference to the text, 
which is the 23d verse of the 3d chapter of Proverbs. 

The shops are attractive, especially the little 
shops for specialties: rare books, prints, old books, 
antiques. No other American city equals Phila- 
delphia in this except New York, and the New York 
specialty shops are so scattered as to require years 
to make their acquaintance. 

In walking in Philadelphia, more than in other 
cities, one is always meeting friends, and especially 
on Chestnut Street ; Chestnut being the most walked- 
upon street, and its walkable district being very 
small, say from Eleventh to Sixteenth. Constantly 
one notices the good looks, the good manners, the 
good clothes. And there comes the memory of that 
extremely active Philadelphian partisan, of Revolu- 
tionary days, Captain Allen McLane, for a bill to 
him, from a Philadelphian merchant, itemized a pair 
of boots, $600, 4 handkerchiefs, $100 each, a little 
calico and silk and chintz (curious purchases to go 
with his boots and handkerchiefs!), making in all a 
total of $3,144; with the saving clause, however, that 
if paid in specie eighteen pounds would settle it ! 

143 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

As to walking on Chestnut Street — ^it is not likely 
that there will ever be anything more important, 
more impressive, then the march of the Continentals 
along this street, led by Washington, on their way to 
the battlefield of Brandywine; ragged, ill-shod, ill- 
clothed, ill-fed, they marched bravely on, with drum- 
ming and fifing, and each with a green twig in his 
hat. 

I have noticed, in Philadelphia, more than the 
number usual in American cities, of the miserable, 
the maimed, the blind, crouched on the stone steps 
or huddled against some wall, not precisely begging 
but silently offering pencils or matches. But I think 
this represents leniency of the authorities rather 
than unusual misery. Another class make the build- 
ings at the corner of Chestnut and Broad streets, 
the most noteworthy business corner of the city, 
greasy with their slouching shoulders; this repre- 
senting the survival of an old custom, arising long 
before the present modern structures stood there. 
In the old days, many a Philadelphian stood at this 
corner, especially if of the '* Bohemian" type; Walt 
Whitman and a few of his worshipers being often 
noticeable. Rebecca Harding Davis, herself a Phila- 
delphian, has described him as "fishy-eyed," and as 
"writing poems to every part of his own anatomy." 
In truth, he sorely shocked the fastidious ; but those 
who object to the fact that he was worshiped by a 
following ought to remember that at that time, in 
England, Tennyson was worshiped to such a degree 
that on leaving a dining-room after dinner, each lady 

144 



STREETS AND WAYS 

was expected to kiss his hand, and that even Ameri- 
can ladies did this! — and that as the English poet 
walked along the road he made such a pretense of 
being fearful of being seen that he covered his face 
from the gaze of the vulgar. It is pleasant to think 
that our "Walt did not do that, whether at Broad and 
Chestnut streets or elsewhere. 

Imbedded in the gummy, oily pavement around 
City Hall are innumerable little black metallic specks 
which, if one stops to look at them, wondering what 
such pavement construction means, will be found to 
be fragments dropped from motor cars, bolts, grease- 
cups, rods, nuts, all the various parts that can be 
shaken off when a car suddenly stops — and the 
sudden stops are frequent. The absurd story may 
have originated here, suggested by this medley of 
debris, of the escaping patient from a sanatorium 
who leaped into a doctor's waiting motor car and 
dashed off with it for liberty, stopping at a nearby 
corner to get two amazed Chinamen into the rear 
seat, and then continuing till a terrific crash ended 
the flight ; when a policeman, hurrying up, could find 
only "a nut and two washers" I 

I learned, one day, motoring around City Hall, 
what may presumably be looked upon as the average 
value of a woman's life, not in the judgTQent of life 
insurance folk but m that of the police; at least, on 
the day in mind, I remember that a policeman, after 
a necessary stoppage of cars, motioned to go on; 
and I went on; but at that very moment a woman 
was so careless as to step out from the sidewalk 

145 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

directly in front of the car, which it was fortunately 
possible to stop while she was still a few inches away. 
At which, the policeman marched over to me. 
** Didn't you see me motion you to come on?" he said. 
"If I had not stopped that woman would have been 
run over," I replied. ** Never you mind about the 
women," he said darkly. **You do as I tell you or 
it'll cost you eighteen dollars." 

When Philadelphia is mentioned, South of Market 
Street claims the name. North of Market is much 
like Brooklyn is to a New Yorker. North of Mar- 
ket is a great area, mile after mile of brick houses, 
three storied and some two storied, individual, 
shoulder to shoulder, houses of well-to-do mer- 
chants rising in clean, Holland-like shininess of door 
varnish, clean panes and exact curtains, white door- 
steps, sometimes with a glimpse of sideyard and 
a garden of greenery, with roses and wistaria in ex- 
treme orderliness. Then, without apparent reason, 
may come a change to squalor, with untidy pave- 
ments, shaky shutters, and desolateness sitting like 
a blight over all. Then one will pass a great area 
of endless two-story, company-built little houses 
in wearying repetition, monotonous in unchang- 
ing likeness, hundreds upon hundreds, street and 
corner and street, street and corner and street. 
The newer of these districts have unvaried houses 
topped by metal cornices with peeling paint. Then 
one will come upon areas of homes, one after another, 
alike as peas in a pod, of be-porched dwellings, and 
as the houses form a continuous line so the porches 

146 



STEEETS AND WAYS 

extend on both sides of tlie way like continuous 
boardwalks, with 'little jumpable hurdles to mark 
each bound. Each of these porches, all rather nar- 
row, is filled to capacity with large-sized rockers, all 
covered in summer, thousands of them, with strips 
of white linen towelling, neat, clean and frequently 
replaced. 

North of Market Street shows acres of the 
mediocre, of the conservative, mostly of the comfort- 
able. It shows an even array of primly starched 
lace curtains of the '80 's, evenly hung across the 
glass, a curtaining which has vanished from other 
cities but which is traditionally the outward and 
visible emblem of prosperity here. "Within the 
houses are treasured the what-nots and the Victorian 
black-walnut furniture, just as south of Market Street 
the mahogany of Chippendale's time is honored and 
preserved. 

Even these quiet folk sitting swaying in their 
tight-wedged, rocker-lined porches are saying to each 
other: *'Yes; she was of good family, a Klinker- 
foos from Schaefferstown, and her grandmother was 
born a — '^ and thus on and on. One wonders 
whether it is the climate of the city or the blood or 
the food. It is so marked, that it must be from all. 

Most of the streets in the central business portion 
of Philadelphia are necessarily one-way streets, 
through narrowness and the volume of traffic, and at 
the crossings there is an infallible way of picking out 
strangers from resident Philadelphians ; for the 
stranger, before crossing, looks both to the rigjit and 

147 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

the left, for possible motor-cars, whereas the PMla- 
delphian looks in one direction only. 

Tradition has it that two spots were reserved, by 
William Penn, to remain forever vacant, ready for 
the use of visiting Indians; and tradition further 
holds that one was a spot in the rear of some build- 
ings on South Second Street, between Chestnut and 
Walnut, and the other on Walnut Street near Broad. 
Neither of these places is now available for the 
wandering Indian, nor have the spots been used as 
playgrounds or resting spots. 

The busybody is a unique feature of Philadelphia 
life ; it being, not an individual, but a set of smallish 
mirrors, one of them being on a concave curve. It 
is so adjusted, at a second-floor window, that a per- 
son within the room may see in reflection, without 
being seen in turn, every passer-by on the sidewalk 
or any caller who may be on the doorstep; all of 
which gives a stranger the idea of an entire city 
peeping at him unobserved. 

I never like to find myself thinking critical 
thoughts of Philadelphia. And one of my pleasant 
memories is of meeting, one day, in a little Connecti- 
cut town, an old man, a veteran of the Civil War, who 
told me of his journey home with a companion 
veteran after Appomattox. They stopped off at 
Philadelphia, and wandered aimlessly about, tired 
and dirty and miserable, and they paused at a gate 
in a high wooden fence in an alley; having become 
so heartsick and ashamed that they had left the main 
streets; and they saw an aged lady motion to them, 

148 



STREETS AND WAYS 

from her window, to come in, and they went in, and 
she and her sister, quiet Friends, welcomed them, 
and gave them hot water and fresh towels, under a 
grapevine in the neat little brick-paved yard— how 
those fresh towels lingered lovingly in the old man's 
memory I— and good things to eat and to drink; and 
tears were in the old man's eyes, and his voice broke 
quaveringly, as he told of how he loved the very 
thought of those gentle women of Philadelphia. 







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149 



CHAPTER X 




ROMANTIC BUSINESS 

HOUSE stately and tranquil 
and wide, with fluted Corinth- 
ian pillars upholding a squar- 
ish portico, a house of 
dull red brick and 
creamy marble, with its 
front door double-ap- 
proached up four or five 
isteps from the side- 
walk: such is the struc- 
ture that was put up almost a century ago for the 
offices of a company which even then was well on 
toward the completion of its first century of age; 
the office building of the oldest fire insurance com- 
pany of the United States. And it might be taken 
for a stately, old-fashioned dwelling, here on South 
Fourth Street, in the heart of old Philadelphia, now 
a busy but dingy region. 

You enter a wide, clear, fine hall, scrupulously 
buff as to wall and creamy as to paint, with classic 
inner doorways, and a leather firebucket or so hang- 
ing up as reminders of the past. You enter the 
drawing-room at the right; that is, you feel as if 
it must be the drawing-room, but it is really an office, 

150 



EOMANTIC BUSINESS 

a quiet and immaculate and soft-colored office, witli 
a quiet and buff-colored safe and a sedately quiet- 
seeming desk, and a general air of peaceful courtesy 
enveloping all. Beliind, and seeming to be an in- 
timate part of the offices, is aai old-time garden, 
orderly and fragrant and sweet. 

The general air is that of leisured ease, the air 
so typical, as one finds, of much of Philadelphia busi- 
ness ; and it seems only natural to find, not only that 
this company still exists in a strong and vigorous 
old age, but that its most important feature is that 
it insures property in perpetuity! — delightful touch, 
significant of the very atmosphere of the city. 

This ancient company, organized in 1752, owes its 
inception to Franklin ; for in fire-insurance, as in so 
many things, ^'Abou Ben Franklin's name led all 
the rest." The attention of Frankhn was early at- 
tracted to the general subject of fires and fire pro- 
tection, and while still a young man he organized a 
volunteer fire-fighting company which did fine serv- 
ice through the many years of its existence. After 
a visit to Paris he wrote urgently regarding safety 
in building, basing his ideas on the French avoid- 
ance of fire dangers ; and when he came to the build- 
ing of his own house he put all that seemed feasible 
into practice. 

The plan of a fire-insurance company met with the 
cordial approval which was customarily given to 
whatever he proposed; and the old company still 
exists, proud of its origin and of its long and busy 
life, an important factor in giving the color of 

151 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

romance to the business of the city. The Hand-in^ 
Hand — so the company is generally and lovingly 
known, from its ancient design of four clasped hands, 
crossed in the unbreakable grasp of the *'My Lady 
goes to London" of childhood. 

A picturesque feature of the older portions of the 
city is the fire-mark still in place on the fronts of old- 
time houses. For it was long the custom, for the 
Hand-in-Hand and the early companies which fol- 
lowed it, to place their designs on the houses they 
insured: fire-marks of lead or iron, a foot or so in 
height ; not at all the insignificant flimsy little marks 
used in other cities some years ago, but big and ef- 
fective and noticeable marks that were honored orna- 
ments. 

The Hand-in-Hand design, the design of hose and 
hydrant, the design of a hand fire-engine, the eagle, 
the Green Tree, most romantic mark of all the marks 
— such are the principal designs still to be found on 
the old house-fronts of the city. And in early days 
they not only served to indicate which fire-insurance 
company held the policy, but their presence or ab- 
sence on the front of a building was likely to deter- 
mine whether or not it should burn if a fire started, 
for it came about that volunteer fire-fighting com- 
panies and the insurance companies had affiliations, 
and that a volunteer company protected or assisted 
by an insurance company would make an effort at a 
fire only if the fire-mark of its company were to be 
seen. 

The Green Tree company was formed from a ro- 

152 



ROMANTIC BUSINESS 

mantic cause. For it came to pass that the Hand-in- 
Hand decided, on account of the burning of several 
houses that had been closely surrounded by trees, 
that it would refuse insurance to any house thus 
situated; it was feared that dry trees would spread 
a fire and that green trees would prevent the getting 
at a fire, hence the ban; whereupon a company was 
quickly organized which made its special appeal to 
the owners of houses which were close-encompassed 
by trees, and this new and rival company adopted 
as its fire-mark a green tree ; and the mark was not 
only of a tree, but it was really green, as, like the 
other fire-marks, this was painted in color. The 
Green Tree became swiftly popular, and the prompt 
reversal, on the part of the Hand-in-Hand, of its own 
opposition, gave tree-surrounded houses a new popu- 
larity. 

On the same street as the old Hand-in-Hand com- 
pany, the almost as old Green Tree has its offices: 
in an old house, once a dwelling house, the home of 
the Cadwaladers : one of the names before which the 
natural Philadelphian knee naturally genuflects. It 
is a mansion of rather high effect, with two arched 
doorways. It is full of the feeling of charming old 
age. It has the atmosphere as of some old London 
business house such as one may dream about or find 
suggested in Dickens; only full of the charm of 
old Philadelphia and with a certain sweet American- 
ism. Climb the stairs, and you find a great draw- 
ing-room stretching through the house. There are 
old and lovely dewdrop chandeliers. There are 

153 



THE BOOK OF. PHILADELPHIA 

great Empire doorframes with ormolu ornaments. 
The doors are laterally paneled, and the panels are 
decorated in black and tawny gold; soft lacquer 
colors in classic arabesques. There are superb 
white marble mantels. There is a great old side- 
board and there is a long mahogany banqueting 
table; for this is one of the old Philadelphia houses 
which keeps up the custom of having dinner on the 
occasion of a meeting of directors. There is old 
Canton china in blue and gold. There are tureens, 
and there are tall jugs, and there is a veritable fleet 
of decanters, in varying degrees of fullness or empti- 
ness. It is very lovely in the old high-ceilinged 
rooms. And the hall of this second floor is magnifi- 
cently divided into anterooms by doors which are 
topped by great semi-circles of glass that are per- 
haps ten feet or so across. 

There is an unreality about this, which goes with 
the unreality of the powerful existing ancient com- 
panies, so charmingly named as they are. Of course 
the Green Tree has a more formal name, just as the 
Hand-in-Hand has a more formal name, but it is 
quite unnecessary to keep the formal names in mind ; 
although, after all, such a name as ''The Philadel- 
phia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses 
from Loss by Fire," is itself a delightful sonorous 
mouthful of words. 

To add to the unreality there is, in the Green Tree 
building, the best of all the portraits of Franklin; 
a Duplessis, but perhaps a replica, a painting warm 
in color, with the collar of minlc showing Franklin's 

154 



ROMANTIC BUSINESS 

face as quiet and strong, with tlie kind of moutli 
to utter terse and clinching sentences, and a look in 
the kindly face such as makes people listen and heed ; 
and the world certainly listened and heeded when 
Franklin spoke. He wears a coat of a redness not 
unlike the hue of the brick of the houses of this, his 
city. It is a superb portrait; and the president of 
the company said, simply, ''I do not think they paint 
portraits hke that nowadays." 

Further to add to the romantic sense of unreality, 
there hang on the walls portrait after portrait of 
successional directors and company presidents, early 
portraits by Neagle, later ones by Cecilia Beaux and 
Abbey and Sargent. Here is a portrait of S. Weir 
Mitchell, here is one of his father, and here is a por- 
trait of his son; thus illustrating, as nothing else 
could so absolutely do, the sense of continuance and 
inheritance in Philadelphia financial organizations. 

And, after all, it was in Philadelphia that the story 
was located of the young lawyer who, taken into his 
father's firm, hurried triumphantly in, one day, with 
the announcement that he had settled a case that had 
been pending for many years; at which the father 
groaned and said, ''My son, my son, I had intended 
that case to give you an income throughout your 
life!" And it is far from a jest, but a serious 
reality, that many an old house in this city stands 
for decade after decade, in charge of some trust or 
trust company, empty, going to ruin, the heirs re- 
ceiving nothing, the property depreciating. 

Philadelphia possesses the most effective depart- 

155 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

ment store in the world, considering beanty of ap- 
pearance, size, the character of the displays and the 
unusual adjuncts. It also possesses the largest, the 
most beautiful and best equipped building iu the 
world that is devoted to publishing. In commercial 
museums and in technical schools the city is also far 
up among the leaders. 

Philadelphia might fairly claim romantic business 
on the single ground, even if there were not numer- 
ous other grounds, of possessing, as its old Stock 
Exchange, so perfect a structure as that at Third 
and Walnut and Dock streets, where Dock Street 
opens into the broad space of its old-time market; 
Dock Street itself being a romantic survival of early 
days, in its ramblings, its divagations, its un-Philadel- 
phia-like meandering course, following as it does the 
ancient waterfront, and still dingily but very busily 
occupied with old-fashioned businesses, with fish 
markets and produce houses. 

The old Stock Exchange is a rounding-fronted 
structure of stone, impressive in its uniformity of 
soft-toned gray; a classic structure, perfect in mass 
and in details, an upstanding, forthfacing, audacious 
building, looking out from its sweeping curve with 
such graceful bravery as gives a veritable Victory 
of Samothrace air. Its tall and fluted classic col- 
umns stand in a noble hemicycle. The building is 
exceedingly high-set, with no steps to break the curv- 
ing front, but with stairs of admirable design at 
either side. Around the edge of the flat roof of the 
structure is a wonderful line of classic pahnettes, 

156 







I I I M 




ROMANTIC BUSINESS 

and above the roof rises a tall, slim, audacious 
cupola, pilastered and lantern-sided. 

But there was a period when Philadelphia reveled 
in business structures of fearsome and depressing 
type ; I was on the point of saying the late Victorian 
period, but it seems unfair to seem to put the blame 
on a woman and a foreigner, especially as a principal 
architectural offender of that sad period made a 
podnt of proudly refusing to see Europe lest his 
taste be impaired; so let us say the Benjamin Har- 
rison or early Grover Cleveland period, when Phila- 
delphia outdid other cities in its erection of massive 
stone buildings, especially banlvs, with ponderous 
towers and bastions and a general originality in ugli- 
ness, with the unfortunate promise of standing for- 
ever, and with the air of conscious respectability 
which visitors think they see in Philadelphians them- 
selves. 

The city has not maintained much of the 
romantic along its waterfront; but there is still pre- 
served the memory of how William Penn himself 
loved both the Delaware and the Schuylkill, and 
loved to go a-boating, now on one river and now on 
the other, flying his flag of lord proprietor on his 
stately barge built high at bow and stern. And there 
is a pleasant tale about the building of an early 
bridge across the Schuylkill, for, there having arisen 
a good deal of doubt about the bridge's strength, the 
builder, when it was finished, cunningly offered one 
dollar each to every man who would drive upon it 
with a wagon loaded with stone and remain until the 

157 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

bridge was filled from end to end. Thus the bridge 
was tested, satisfactorily, and at slight cost; and, it 
is recorded, without those out in the middle com- 
plaining of their greater degree of danger or their 
longer wait; and ill-natured folk used to point to 
this as an example of how attractive a dollar has 
always looked to a Pennsylvanian. 

The city is rich in traditions of its far-flung busi- 
ness line of even distant days ; it is rich in traditions 
of early trade with India and with China, and many 
is the old family which holds, among its precious 
treasures, punch-bowls of Chinese Lowestoft, crape 
shawls of the Orient, china and silks, and brass- 
bound chests of camphor-wood. Young men of 
family used to covet the chance of sailing to the 
Orient as (fascinating word, so familiar in the boys' 
books of a few decades ago!) supercargo of a clipper 
ship ; and a husband and wife, long-time dwellers on 
Spruce Street, are proud to say that on each side 
of the family a grandfather went out to the East, 
when a young man, as supercargo, and that their 
home contains two beautiful sets of Nankin china, 
because the taste of each of the supercargo ancestors 
ran to Nankin; the bleu de Nankin of thousand- 
chimneyed King-te-tching. 

Galloping across the great high plains among the 
Colorado Eockies, I noticed how fine was the effect 
of the most typically Western hats, broad of brim 
and goodlooking in shape, worn by the most typically 
Western of the horsemen of that region ; and I found 
that these most Western-appearing hats were of 

158 



BOMANTIC BUSINESS 

Philadelphia make and always thus spoken of, by 
name. 

Franklin has set down that when he was a boy his 
father loved to quote encouragingly, **Seest thou a 
man diligent in his business? he shall stand before 
kings"; and that in the course of his long career 
he actually stood before five kings; stating this 
fact, in which he would be justified in feeling im- 
mense pride, in the simplest half dozen of words, 
without even itemizing the monarchs who welcomed 
him; and somehow this success with kings recalls a 
Philadelphia triumph with a President, for, only a 
few years ago, when a Philadelphia merchant wished 
to open a new retail store under the highest possible 
auspices, he just naturally sent an invitation to the 
White House, and the then President of the United 
States quitted his national duties long enough to 
come here to take part. 

I have seen thousands of people gathered in the 
great inner court of a Philadelphia store, listening 
to the playing of a mighty organ of the store; busi- 
ness thus becoming a social and musical affair 1 And 
I have seen and heard, in the same court, after our 
entry into the great war, thousands of people sing- 
ing national songs; business thus becoming a 
patriotic affair. And in this city business may also 
become an artistic affair, for in the great entrance 
hall of a publishing house is a mosaic of great length, 
and of wealth of color, softly glowing above a long 
pool of water which lies pictorially on almost the 
level of the floor. 

159 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

Along the Scliuylkill, in tlie vicinity of tlie FaUs, 
is a PMladelpliia that is practically unknown except 
to such as labor there ; a district of endless stretches 
of close-crowded mills and factories, a district which 
seems a succession of English mill towns ; with much 
of picturesqueness too, for there is the river itself, 
and there are the steep-rising slopes up which lead 
streets that go straight or go twisting, and where 
little stone homes • alternately straggle or pack close 
for comradeship. 

And, to return to the center of the city, it is but 
typical of the ancient portion, that you may pass 
through an arch beneath a building and unexpectedly 
find yourself mthin a little court surrounded by of- 
fices thus quite tucked away. 

To enter through an archway is always felicitous ; 
and most fascinating of all is it to enter through an 
archway, closed at night with ancient wooden doors, 
on Second Street near Callowhill, for it is the en- 
trance to the ancient Black Horse Inn. And within 
the archway is still the ancient inn-yard, a long, 
rough-paved parallelogram, enclosed by simply 
balustraded doddering balconies. It is such an old 
innyard as used to be common in London, and which 
may still be seen in some of the English pro\'incial 
towns. From such an innyard Pickwick himself 
might have driven. Old windows look down into the 
ancient court, and wagons are still driven into the 
enclosure, and the imagination cannot but recon- 
struct all the busy life of an age that has vanished 
quite away. The flickering lights and glooming 

160 




•, <.' ■• ' 




.:...v .; 


II 


m 


ii 


I ■'' 


.A- 




■ 




^^9U 



ROMANTIC BUSINESS 

shadows, tlie old-time atmosphere of it all, serve to 
make it among the most romantic of Philadelphia 
memorials. 

It would seem as if the entrance of women into 
business must needs add touches of romance; and 
it has added at least one touch of diversion. At a 
war-charity rummage sale, or **gefoojet," one of the 
many features was the offering of chances on a 
sweater at twenty-five cents a chance. And as 1 
stood there, getting something else at the same 
counter, the girl in charge of the sweater said, quite 
openly, to the woman in charge of that department, 
that she thought she had reached the limit on chances 
but could sell the article outright. 

**I have taken nine dollars and twenty-five cents 
on chances and have been offered four dollars for it 
outright," she said. *'Sell it! That will make over 
thirteen dollars 1" was the unhesitating reply. 

At a meeting of a business association, it was 
moved that some severe criticism of the Eeading 
Railway be adopted. (This was shortly before the 
taking over by the government of all the railways, 
during the war.) But one wealthy man rose quickly 
to his feet. His wealth, as everybody knew, had 
come to him through the killing of a rich uncle by 
this very railway. "I object!" he cried. *'Grod 
bless the Reading Railway!" 

The romantic or the unusual, may readily, in busi- 
ness, become the bizarre; and I remember a notice 
which I saw in the window of a big undertaking 
establishment on Chestnut Street: ** Wanted; Ten 

161 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

intelligent men to act as Professional Pallbearers'*; 
and it was added, with praiseworthy attention to 
detail, that they must be at least five feet ten inches 
in height ; and the notice concluded with the extraor- 
dinarily practical touch that they ''must have black 
hair" ! After all, it was a South Street black woman 
who put on not only a black dress but black under- 
wear, when her husband died, because when she 
mourned she ''mohned all over." 






162 



CHAPTEE XI 



ART AND ARTISTS 




[HERE are two big canvases 
by the Philadelphia painter, 
Benjamin West, including his 
famous "Death on the Pale 
Horse," in the Academy of 
the Fine Arts of this city ; an- 
other great canvas — for West 
worked in a period when there was 
importunate demand for canvases 
of heroic size, and he was amply 
qualified to meet the demand — ^is 
in the Pennsylvania Hospital here; others are pre- 
served in the National Gallery of London, in the 
Grosvenor Gallery, and in many other public or pri- 
vate British collections. 

Benjamin West was also a personal favorite of 
George the Third, and by a remarkable chance it so 
happened that he was painting a portrait of that 
monarch when a messenger entered with news from 
West's own city, the most important news that ever 
came out of Philadelphia, that of the Signing of the 
Declaration of Independence. For a little while the 
King was agitated ; then his agitation ceased and he 
became silent and thoughtful; and at length he said 

163 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

slowly: ''Well, if they cannot be happy under my 
government, I hope they will not change it for a 
worse. — I wish them no ill.'' 

West had been prominent in organizing the Eoyal 
Academy, and when its first president, Sir Joshua 
Eeynolds, died, he, American as he was, was 
unanimously chosen president to succeed the mighty 
Eeynolds, and held the office for more than a score 
of years. 

When he died, in 1820, he was laid to rest in St. 
Paul's, where Eeynolds and Van Dyck had similarly 
been honored, and his body was followed to the 
cathedral by a long line of lovers of art and by great 
and titled men. Yet in the very year of West's 
death Sydney Smith wrote his famous gibe: '*In 
the four quarters of the globe, who looks at an 
American picture or reads an American book?" 
And at the time, and ever since, the gibe has been 
accepted, not so much by the English as by Ameri- 
cans themselves, just because a very clever English- 
man said it; although Sydney Smith well knew of 
Benjamin West, and also of that other American, 
Lindley Murray — also to be deemed a Philadel- 
phian, for he was born in Lancaster County — whose 
Grammar was, when Smith wrote, the acknowledged 
standard for all British writers. So that Sydney 
Smith well knew, and every one ought to know, that 
everybody of taste or knowledge looked at Ameri- 
can pictures and honored American writing; and to 
West and Murray may be added Gilbert Stuart, a 
superior of West, and Benjamin Franklin, whose 

164 



AET AND ARTISTS 

writings were familiar to every Englislimaii. Yet 
what persistent life a gibe may have ! 

Enclosed within the campus of Swarthmore Col- 
lege is still preserved the farmhouse in which, far 
back in 1735, Benjamin West was bom. Indians were 
still common in the neighborhood at that period, and 
one day one of them, watching little Benjamin mak- 
ing a picture (for West was an instinctive artist from 
his very boyhood), silently gave the lad some pig- 
ment of red and some of yellow, such as the Indians 
used in painting their own bodies, so that the boy 
might make his pictures in color. Overjoyed, the 
boy ran to show the colors to his mother, whereupon 
she promptly handed him some indigo from beside 
her washtub, and thus did Benjamin West first come 
into possession of the three primary colors; one of 
the many examples of the ancient adage that truth 
is stranger than fiction. 

As a young man, we see West away from this farm 
and located in nearby Philadelphia, making pictures 
for one dollar each (the Spanish dollar was then our 
unit of money), and before long he has actually so 
improved, under such encouragement and advice 
as the town could then offer, and by virtue of his 
indefatigability, that he is receiving five pounds for 
every portrait ; and now he heeded the call of Eome, 
and sailed, armed with letters of introduction and 
preceded by letters of description; for Philadelphia 
was proud of him. 

And now came an incident which forever gave him 
standing. The painters in Eome arranged joyfully 

165 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

to make game of the raw youth from the backwoods, 
and they so managed as to have him first led into the 
presence of the Apollo Belvidere. But West looked 
calmly at the statue, with intelligent appreciation; 
and then said, quietly, *'It is like a Mohawk war- 
rior." With that he attained, in an instant, in the 
judgment of European artists — for his words flew 
broadcast — to the pedestal of clear-sighted original- 
ity; no one else had ever thought of comparing the 
physical perfection of Greece with the physical per- 
fection of the American wilderness. 

He did not settle in Eome, but in London, and 
there he never failed to use every opportunity to aid 
other American artists, for he knew from his own 
experience how much an artist needs aid and en- 
couragement in his formative days. Gilbert Stuart, 
Copley, Allston, Trumbull; such and others were 
American artists that, in London, he nobly encour- 
aged and generously helped. And many Americans 
called who were not artists, and they were always 
genially welcomed; and in regard to this there is a 
story that is peculiarly typical of Philadelphia. For 
one day West had as a dinner guest one of the 
Whartons of Philadelphia, and a caller was an- 
nounced, and as West did not happen to know the 
name, Wharton volunteered to go and see who it was. 
In a few moments he came back beaming: *'He's 
all right!" he exclaimed. **He is connected with one 
of the most exclusive Philadelphia families ! ' ' 

The portraits of West and his wife by Matthew 
Pratt, said to be the first American artist that West 

166 



ART AND AETISTS 

helped, show the distinguished man to have been 
very distinguished looking, with long nose and high- 
arched eyebrows, with a slender, striking and un- 
usual face framed in dark hair; and Mrs. "West is 
an alert, winsome, highly likable woman, with pearl 
necklace, low-cut dress and filmy white scarf, and 
an odd suggestion of Mona Lisa about the mouth. 
They make a handsome pair, like a couple straight 
out of romance; and their marriage was indeed a 
romance. And never did a romantic tale concern so 
many distinguished Philadelphians. 

For before leaving Philadelphia for Eome, West 
had met pretty Elizabeth Shewell ; he had been intro- 
duced to her by Anthony Wayne; and an engage- 
ment followed acquaintance, but her brother — the 
two were orphans — frowned upon the engagement, 
for he was a wealthy merchant and saw no money 
in art. So West went to Europe alone. 

But as soon as he won his foothold abroad, West 
wrote to Elizabeth that he now was able to earn 
sufficient money to live on. His father, he said, was 
shortly going to England to see him, and he begged 
her to cross in his father's care, and they would be 
married in London. He must have given a good 
reason why he could not come back to Philadelphia 
to get her, for the high-spirited Elizabeth acceded 
to his urgency and told her brother that she was 
going to London to be married; at which the ogre 
of a brother promptly and literally locked her in her 
room. Elizabeth had unguardedly told him every- 
thing, even on what ship West's father was to sail, 

167 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

and with that knowledge the brother determined to 
keep her under lock and key until after the boat had 
gone. 

But Elizabeth was not to be balked. She was 
going to be married to her Benjamin! So she con- 
trived to let one of his friends know of her plight, 
whereupon he and two other friends planned to aid 
her. There is no absolute certainty as to who were 
the three, but charming tradition has for decades 
had it that they were Benjamin Franklin, Francis 
Hopkinson, who was afterwards one of the Signers, 
and William White, who was destined to become the 
first Episcopalian bishop in America. And never 
was so romantic and youthful a scheme carried out 
by so many men who were later to win such grave 
dignities. 

Through collusion with Elizabeth's maid a rope- 
ladder was smuggled into the house, and after night 
had fallen the young woman and the maid descended 
from the window and, under the escort of the three 
friends, they galloped down to Chester — what a de- 
lightful galloping party that was! — and at Chester 
a small boat was in waiting to carry them out into 
the channel, where the brig which was bearing 
West's father had lain to, by arrangement with the 
captain, to wait for them. And so Elizabeth got to 
London and became Mrs. West. 

For over fifty years of married life the romance 
happily continued; and it adds fascinating interest 
to the groat pictures by West that his city of Phila- 
delphia still pridefuily preserves. 

168 



AET AND ARTISTS 

On the whole, the most distinguished portrait 
painter that America has produced was Gilbert 
Stuart, and it was in Philadelphia that his most 
superb portraits, those of President Washington, 
were made. 

The father of Gilbert Stuart was a Scotchman who 
gallantly went out for ** Prince Charlie" and, after 
fighting through the brief campaign and at Culloden, 
fled to America and started a little snuff mill a few 
miles from what is now known as Narragansett Pier, 
in Rhode Island. I was near there lately, and hunted 
the place up, and found the old mill and the old house 
still there, beside the thicket-bordered little stream, 
in the heart of a wild and little settled region (small 
though Rhode Island is!); and I thought it but 
natural that an American, born in so romantic a 
spot, should, after great success in England and the 
painting of King George and of his son who was to 
be another King George, romantically gave up his 
career of success for the sake of coming back to his 
native land to paint the greatest George of aU, George 
Washington. 

What is known as the Athenseum portrait, which 
was made by Stuart in Philadelphia while the seat 
of the national government was here, is by general 
consent, and has from the first been deemed, the finest 
and most adequate of all the portraits of Washing- 
ton, whether by Gilbert Stuart or others. And there 
were so many artists, in all, including Americans and 
foreigners, who wished to put Washington on canvas 
or into marble, that he could write, good-naturedly, 

169 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

that **I am now altogether at their beck, and sit like 
Patience on a monument, whilst they are delineating 
the lines of my face ' ' ; and this is especially interest- 
ing from its incidental quotation from Shakespeare, 
which was not at all a customary matter with Wash- 
ington. 

The Athenaeum portrait, with the firm-set mouth, 
the steady eyes, the brooding, watchful greatness of 
it all, stands as the picture of a ruler of the ages; 
and I do not know that it has ever been remarked 
that it bears a striking resemblance to the Sphinx. 
Whether by accident or design, and I think it must 
have been by design, Gilbert Stuart followed the posi- 
tion, the pose and the angles of that mighty mystery 
of the past, and there is in his portrait the same 
massive dignity and gravity, the same calm unshak- 
ableness, that one sees in the Sphinx. The stoppage 
of Gilbert Stuart's portrait at the shoulders adds to 
the similitude, and even the hair of Washington, in 
the portrait, comes down precisely as does that of 
the great stone image. 

This portrait by Stuart did not remain in Phila- 
delphia, but went to Boston, but Philadelphia still 
possesses, in spite of this, the finest collection of 
Gilbert Stuart's portraits, in both number and 
variety, of any city. Most of them are gathered at 
the Academy of the Fine Arts, and they are superb 
and beautiful examples of portraiture. Hazlitt, 
who once filled a great space in the public eye, de- 
serves to be still remembered for some of his wise 
clevernesses, as, for example, his declaration that he 

170 



AKT AND AETISTS 

would rather leave a good portrait of himself behind 
him than a good epitaph; and he would have been 
more than ever justified in his remark could he have 
been painted by Gilbert Stuart. 

The Gilbert Stuarts are the glory of the Academy, 
and it is to be regretted that for the greater part of 
that time of the year during which visitors come to 
the city, the Gilbert Stuarts are heedlessly packed 
out of sight, to make room for hundreds of pictures, 
most of them necessarily mediocre, in spite of the 
numerous fine ones, shown in the annual exhibitions. 

On the whole, Philadelphia still holds the art 
leadership of the country, and it is odd that it should 
do so, for, although in the beginning it was the 
largest and richest American city, riches and size 
were soon more markedly attained by New York. 
Yet New York, in drawing to herself the national 
leadership in literature and the professions, was not 
able to grasp the leadership in art. 

To the Academy of the Fine Arts, **the Academy," 
the long leadership is owing ; it having been founded 
in 1805 by that original genius, Charles Willson 
Peale, who did so much for America in painting the 
portraits of her leaders, and who, similar to the 
many-sided Paul Revere, was not only of highly 
artistic bent, but was also a dentist, an engraver and 
a silversmith, a saddler, a clockmaker, a glass 
molder and a soldier; at the Battle of Trenton he 
served as a captain of volmiteers; but most of all 
he was artistic. And when it came to naming his 
children he did not name them after rich uncles or 

171 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

famous statesmen but, with proper devotion to his 
art, gave such names as Rembrandt and Eaphael, 
Van Dyck, Titian and Angelica Kauffman. It was 
as if, like Bernard Shaw's Louis Dubedat, his con- 
fession of faith was: **I believe in Michael Angelo, 
Velasquez and Rembrandt, in the might of design, 
the mystery of color, the redemption of all things by 
Beauty everlasting." Or, if one wishes to be more 
prosaic, he may compare Peale's idiosyncrasy with 
that of the soldier of Charles Dickens who named his 
children from the garrison posts where they were 
born, as Malta, Quebec and Woolwich. 

One does not need to feel prosaic about anything 
connected with Charles Willson Peale, for he pro- 
foundly worshiped art from his early years to the 
very close of his long life. He worshiped art, in 
those early American days, under difficulties. And 
it is pleasant to remember that Washington liked 
him. 

He tried to establish an art collection and a school 
of art, in 1791, and was aided, but unsuccessfully, 
by the wood-carver Rush, and an Italian named 
Ceracchi who had come over to make busts of Wash- 
ington and others and who, unfortunately for him- 
self, went to France just in time to be guillotined. 
A few years later Peale made another attempt, but 
this time shocked Philadelphia by showing a Venus 
de Medici in his collection, and it had to be kept out 
of sight except for a privileged few. 

But he persevered, and the present Academy was 
started, by seventy-one leading citizens, who met to- 

172 



ART AND ARTISTS 

gether and decided to organize; and it was housed 
in a beautiful classic building designed by the dis- 
tinguished Latrobe. From the first the Academy 
was given acknowledged standing, even though its 
first formal exhibition, in 1806, was sorely shocking. 
For casts of statuary had been sent from Paris, and 
although they had been chosen by a Biddle (one of 
the names revered by Philadelphia) it was necessary 
to set aside Mondays for the ladies exclusively, so 
that they need not be embarrassed. 

In the course of years the classic structure was 
burned, and it was in 1876 that the Academy moved 
to its new quarters, the extremely uninteresting 
structure that it built at Broad and Cherry streets. 

It was a Philadelphia artist, Sargent, who gave 
Whistler the opportunity to flash one of the most 
brilliant lightnings of his caustic wit. For Sargent 
had on exhibition in London a painting which he had 
named ''Carnation Lily, Lily Rose," which swiftly 
brought from Whistler the ''Darnation silly, silly 
pose!" And, Sargent being a man of high ability, 
the clever fleer doubtless was of influence in keeping 
him from progress in a sentimental direction. 

I call Sargent a Philadelphian because he called 
himself a Philadelphian, although he was born in 
Italy, and his first childish language was German, 
and his first art study was in France, and England 
has been principally his home. Queen Victoria 
once offered to make him an Englishman, but he 
courteously declined. His parents were of wealth 
and social position in this city; his mother was a 

173 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

Newbold ; so he was born in the Philadelphia purple, 
although the purple happened to be at the time in 
Florence. Admirable and distinguished though his 
work is, one fancies that perhaps a little more of 
AVhistler would have been good for his art, for an 
infusion of weakness, which it needed a peculiarly 
clearsighted man to discover, displayed itself when 
he came to make portraits of the really great and 
strong; for at the recent exhibition of 1918 at the 
Philadelphia Academy there were shown his Wood- 
row Wilson and his John D. Rockefeller, and in 
neither case was this really great painter able to 
put upon canvas the indomitable forcefulness of his 
subject. Plainly though that quality is to be seen 
in the faces of both of them, Sargent did not repro- 
duce it. 

William M. Chase, though born in Indiana, had 
much to do with Philadelphia. He was greatly 
stimulated by the Centennial. For thirteen years 
he taught in this city. Here he painted some of his 
best works. Here his finical dressing became 
recognized, his care as to every detail, even to every 
hair of his pointed beard. And he himself keenly 
appreciated the astonished question of a little 
ragged boy, who, playing on the Broad Street pave- 
ment, caught sight of him and, after a moment's 
stare of fascination, ran after him with the 
impulsive question, *'Say, mister, ain't you some- 
body?" 

As a man and as an artist. Chase impressed; and 
what is probably his finest portrait, the ''Lady with 

174 



ART AND ARTISTS 

the White Shawl," is in the Academy: a lovely por- 
trait, a thing of beauty, a portrait all in harmony, 
the fine and expressive face, the dark background, 
the dark gown and the white shawl. 

Whistler, rather critical of Sargent, was a close 
personal friend of Chase, and one of Whistler's most 
excellent portraits is in this city; not, however, at 
the Academy but lost amid the jumble of the 
ordinary at Memorial Hall; and yet, not really lost, 
for the eye singles it out at once; the portrait of 
Lady Archibald Campbell, a picture of splendid 
color in perfect modulations, the portrait of a beau- 
tiful woman, a woman all alive. Yet it is remem- 
bered that her husband did not like it! — which per- 
haps explains why it found its way to this city of 
Philadelphia. 

Friend of Chase though he was. Whistler would 
have been delighted to be the author of a pungent 
Philadelphia cleverness regarding him; for a visitor, 
looking first at the distinguished Sully portraits of 
lovely women, and then at the white-shawled portrait 
by Chase, remarked that if he were a woman he 
"would rather be Sullyed than Chased." 

In the very first city directory of Philadelphia is 
a reminder of an early and curious connection of 
art with this city, for in that directory, of 1785, 
Robert Fulton is set down as a miniature painter, at 
Second and Walnut streets; for Fulton was Lan- 
caster County born, and was a painter before he 
became inventor of the steamboat. I do not recall 
any of his portraits as retained in Philadelphia, but 

175 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

Ms work may be seen (and it is fairly good work, 
too) among the portraits gathered at the City Hall 
in New York. 

Howard Pyle was nearly a Philadelphian, for his 
home was at nearby Wilmington; and he painted 
castles and feudal knights in armor excellently 
throughout many years; until, indeed, he went to 
Europe and for the first time saw the castles which 
his imagination and his brush had so well pictured; 
whereupon, whether with age or excitement, he 
shortly died. 

Edwin A. Abbey was born in Philadelphia, and 
was typesetter on a newspaper before getting his 
start as an artist. And mention of his name brings 
up the question of how English Eoyalty could get 
along without Americans, and especially without 
Philadelphians. For Charles Leslie, who painted 
the Coronation of Queen Victoria, was the son of a 
Philadelphia watchmaker and went to England to 
make his artistic fortune; and as to Abbey, it was 
the most curious of his life experiences, that, seated 
on the top of the tomb of Edward the Confessor, 
he made his studies, during the ceremonies, for the 
painting which at King Edward's request he made 
of that King's coronation in Westminster Abbey; and 
he had also the curious experience of refusing the 
formal request of the government to paint the coro- 
nation of George the Fifth: Abbey himself having 
become a veritable ''Westminster Abbey" indeed. 

John LaFarge was not a Philadelphian, yet he 
should be mentioned in references to Philadelphia 

176 



ART AND AETISTS 

art, because his father, a young officer of Napoleon 
the Great, having been sent to San Domingo as one 
of an expedition to suppress an insurrection, was 
compelled to flee and, after vividly exciting adven- 
tures, reached America, landing at Philadelphia. 
And the artist himself had another connection with 
this city, because he married a young woman who 
was not only the grandaughter of Commodore Perry 
of the Battle of Lake Erie but great-granddaughter 
of Benjamin Franklin. 

There are present-day Philadelphia artists, women 
as well as men; in fact, women rather more than men, 
as if to call attention to the fact that this is the Twen- 
tieth Century; who carry on the tradition of the city's 
artistic distinction, by not only doing excellent work 
but by winning fame far beyond the bounds of the 
city: among such artists being Elizabeth Shippen 
Green, Cecilia Beaux, Violet Oakley, Mary Cassatt, 
Alice Barber Stephens, and, notable among the 
world's etchers, Joseph Pennell. Maxfield Parrish, 
too, is a Philadelphian. 

A Philadelphia lawyer calmly remarked to a 
Philadelphia artist one day — I have the story from 
the lips of the artist himself — that the necessary 
men are the lawyer, the doctor, and the clergyman, 
the artist being but an unnecessary chance product ; 
to which cool assurance the artist instantly replied 
that the lawyer, the doctor, and the clergyman de- 
pend entirely for their existence upon the crimes or 
accidents of life, for not one of the three would be 
of any good whatever if nothing were the matter 

177 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

with body or property or soul; but that the artist 
stands for the beautiful, and for things which nobly 
nourish the mind. 







178 




CHAPTER XII 

SOME ACTORS AND AUTHORS 

MONG the monuments and memorials 
of a city are to be included not only ma- 
terial evidences, but things impalpable, 
things intangible, permanent as- 
sociations, triumphs of mental 
achievement which the nation or 
the world does not forget. A song, 
for example, may be a memorial quite as much 
as a building; and "Hail, Columbia!" is such a 
monument for Philadelphia. For in 1798, when 
war was threatening between our country and 
France, and we were aflame with patriotism, 
Joseph Hopkinson, a lawyer of this city, was 
asked by an actor named Fox to compose some 
patriotic words for the tune which had become 
known as the ''President's March," and Hop- 

Ikinson did so, writing the lines in a fever of 
inspiration. The tune was the present tune 
for **Hail, Columbia!" and when Hopkinson 's 
*'Hail, Columbia!" words were first sung with it 
the audience went wild with joy and the song swept 
through the country on an immense wave of popu- 
larity. 

The excellent and fiery ''Sheridan's Ride" was 

179 



THE BOOK OP PHILADELPHIA 

also the work of a Pliiladelphian, Thomas Buchanan 
Eead; although he was temporarily away from 
Quaker influence, in Cincinnati, when he wrote it. 
The critical mind of Philadelphia holds itself aloof 
from the poem, willing rather to allow some degree 
of merit to his ''Brickmaker," which no one but a 
Philadelphian has ever read. Philadelphia, and in- 
deed Pennsylvania, love to place on pedestals 
authors or works that are elsewhere little known. 
A recent book by a former governor, Pennypacker, 
declares, for example, in regard to Bayard Taylor, 
whose home was but a few miles from Philadelphia, 
that "It is a grave question whether the 'Scarlet 
Letter' of Hawthorne or the 'Story of Kennett' by 
Taylor holds the higher rank among American 
novels." And on the next page he states, with ap- 
proval, that some sonnets about the local Susque- 
hanna region have been soberly likened to the work 
of Anacreon and Shakespeare. One can only think 
of the loyal Scotchman who, claiming the greatest 
writers for Scotland, asserted that even Shakes- 
peare was a Scotchman, and, when pressed for 
proof, exclaimed, ''Look at his style, mon!" 

Some years ago " Trilby *' gave new life and im- 
mense vogue to the old English ballad of "Ben 
Bolt"; but it is an English ballad only in having as 
its author Thomas Dunn English, who was an 
American in spite of his name and was born here in 
Philadelphia; and although, in the course of a long 
life spent in writing, he never wl'ote another line 
that is remembered, he did not need to do so; to 

180 



SOME ACTOES AND AUTHOES 

write one song that is known all over the earth is 
achievement sufficient. 

In the always interesting ''Table Talk" of 
Samuel Eogers he tells of his first meeting with 
Shelley. The great poet called on the banker-poet 
and, introducing himself, asked for a loan. It was 
not for himself, he explained, though he would give 
his personal bond for it; it was for Leigh Hunt. 
But the rich Eogers refused, and writes down his 
refusal as calmly as if refusing money to such a man 
as Shelley on behalf of the author of the noble 
"Abou Ben Adhem" were a mere commonplace of 
life. 

Poor Leigh Hunt — ''kind Hunt," as Keats terms 
him in one of his sonnets — was born in an 
atmosphere of pitiful poverty, and poverty re- 
mained the atmosphere of most of his life, even when 
Dickens was cruelly assailing him under the guise 
of Harold Skimpole. And Leigh Hunt was almost 
a Philadelphian ; in fact, he would have been had it 
not been for Philadelphians ! 

For his father was Isaac Hunt, an attorney of 
this city, and his mother was also of this city and 
of excellent connections. But with the approach of 
the Eevolutionary War, Isaac Hunt remained a 
Loyalist. Before me lies a thin little book, a 
pathetic little book, browned and yellowed with age, 
printed in Philadelphia in 1775, with Isaac Hunt's 
name bravely on the title-page, and bravely begin- 
ning: "The jealousies which at present unhappily 
subsist between Great Britain and her colonies, 

181 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

render a discourse on this subject delicate and haz- 
ardous"; and continuing with such statements as: 
*'It is easy to believe, Great Britain will not tamely 
give up her right of regulating the trade of her 
colonies." That was indeed a ** delicate and 
hazardous" kind of book to write, and although 
there was a great deal of pro-British feeling in the 
city, it gradually vanished in the course of the war. 
A great deal of it vanished, in an extremely un- 
happy way, when General Clinton evacuated the city 
after having taken over the command from Howe, 
who had done little but give opportunities for gay 
parties and dances and for a great deal of display 
of their love for red coats on the part of the young 
women, of whom General Knox wrote that ''they 
love a red coat dearly." When Clinton went to New 
York, several thousands of Philadelphians, who had 
become known as frank British sympathizers, and 
who had never thought it possible that the British 
could so fail, left the city also, many of them on 
boats convoyed by the English fleet — and sad tales 
have been told of their sorrowfully looking back at 
their city while the ships lay becalmed — and the 
others, with baggage and household possessions, with 
the bulk of the army, who went overland. 

But the father of Leigh Hunt did not leave his 
home voluntarily. To leave, would mean hopeless 
disaster in the loss not only of home but of a way 
of support. He would fain have stayed. But he 
was not permitted to live down his unfortunate out- 
spokenness. One day a mob went to his house, and 

182 



SOME ACTOES AND AUTHOES 

carried him off in a cart to be tarred and feathered, 
stopping at corner after corner to gather additions 
to their number ; and poor Hunt tried to make a little 
speech at each such stopping place, thanking them 
for not doing worse to him than giving him blows 
and missiles and violent epithets, and hoping, to 
himself, that their terrible mood would change. It 
is a terrible and pathetic picture; and when they 
were through with him he could only flee, absolutely 
penniless, with his wife, to England; and there, in 
the year following the treaty of peace, Leigh Hunt 
was born to his inheritance of poverty, instead of 
into the condition of Philadelphia comfort which 
should naturally have been his. 

A still more interesting British literary connec- 
tion with Philadelphia is that which associates this 
city with Walter Scott, and it came about through 
the visit to Abbotsford of Washington Irving. For 
the two men liked each other, and had long walks 
and talks together, and one day, as they strode over 
the heather near the superb Eildons, the subject of 
Jews arose, and Irving told Scott of a rich young 
Jewess of Philadelphia, Eebecca Gratz, who was 
singularly beautiful, who had loved and been loved 
by a Christian, but who would not marry out of her 
sect, and had therefore devoted her life and her 
wealth to works of charity. Irving spoke with pro- 
found feeling of the unusual beauty and unusual 
qualities of Eebecca Gratz ; he knew her because she 
had been the close friend of the young woman, 
Matilda Hoffman, whom he was to have married, 

183 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

but who had died ; and Scott was deeply impressed — ■ 
so deeply, that when, shortly afterwards, he wrote 
**Ivanhoe," he described one of the sweetest and 
finest characters in all fiction, Rebecca of York, from 
Irving 's description of Eebecca of Philadelphia. 

Philadelphians love to set forth the fact that here 
were written two of the most notable literary 
achievements of the world, the Declaration of In- 
dependence and the Constitution of the United 
States, both of them remarkable for fine literary 
quality, for precision of statement, for lucid presen- 
tation of facts, for logical arrangement. But it is 
possible, so it has been unkindly suggested, that they 
do not always remember that neither of these im- 
portant productions was written by a Philadelphian. 
But to any one who may make such a suggestion it 
may with justice be said that at any rate the 
** Autobiography" of Franklin, one of the few great 
autobiographies of the world, was written by a Phila- 
delphian, and also his **Poor Richard" and other 
world-famous works. And in regard to Franklin 
there is a story that I think is very little known. 

Stopping one evening at an inn m Amiens, on his 
way to London, after the war was over, Franklin 
was told, an hour or so after his arrival, that the 
English historian, Gibbon, he of the "Roman Em- 
pire," had just arrived, on his way to his home in 
Lausanne. So Franklin sent his compliments to Gib- 
bon and suggested that they take advantage of this 
opportunity to become acquainted. To which Gib- 
bon sent the reply that, much though he should appre- 

184 



SOME ACTORS AND AUTHOES 

ciate the privilege of meeting Doctor Franklin, tlie 
scholar, and eminent man of science, he must regret- 
fully decline to meet him, as he had stood for rebel- 
lion against Great Britain. Whereat Franklin sent 
the reply that when Mr. Gibbon, following his present 
work, should come to the writing of ''The Decline 
and Fall of the British Empire," he would be able to 
acquire considerable information, not elsewhere at- 
tainable, by applying to himself. Doctor Franklin. 

One might believe Lausanne itself to be responsible 
for much of British self-consciousness, for there 
comes the thought of the famous Charles Kemble 
there, so jealous of his own importance that he 
actually disliked to hear the one familiar question of 
the place, ''How does Mont Blanc look this morn- 
ing?" for it so ignored himself. 

When Kemble came to America with his daughter, 
Fanny Kemble, Fitz-Greene Halleck wrote of their 
first appearance together, and referred enthusiastic- 
ally to the daughter's "dark, flashing eye" and her 
"brunette shin"; a typographical blunder still re- 
membered because of the importance of both the 
writer and the person written about. 

What a family of stagefolk the Kembles were! 
For there were Eoger Kemble and John Mitchell 
Kemble, and the Charles Kemble who was jealous of 
Mont Blanc, and that George Kemble who attained 
the unique distinction of becoming fat enough to play 
Falstaff without the aid of padding, and there was 
the mighty Mrs. Siddons, who was Sarah Kemble Sid- 
dons, and there was the Adelaide Kemble Sartoris 

185 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

whose son married the daughter of President Grant, 
and the Elizabeth Kemble Whitlock whose playing 
in Philadelphia won the approbation and attendance 
of President Washington, and there was Fanny 
Kemble, who became a Philadelphian by marrying 
Pierce Butler, grandson of the Senator Butler who 
had built the great mansion which long since became 
the home of the Philadelphia Club. 

It was not a happy marriage. Washington Irving, 
so she herself has narrated, guardedly cautioned her 
against it, and, in a spirit which she was large-minded 
enough to appreciate, warned her not to be a ** creak- 
ing door," that being, he explained, a wife whose 
querulousness would be as nerve-racking as a door 
that constantly creaked. But she creaked ; and there 
at length came divorce. 

When Thackeray was here, he made a point of call- 
ing on Pierce Butler, hoping to get news of the 
children, for Fanny, the mother, then in London, but 
Butler probably surmised his object, for he would 
neither speak a word of the children nor show them, 
and Thackeray did not wish to make direct request 
or inquiry, and so he could only report failure. 

Thackeray got his inspiration and his material, in 
America, for *'The Virginians"; and how greatly he 
would have been interested to know that a Philadel- 
phian, a grandson of his friend Fanny Kemble, was 
to win wide literary fame, and especially with "The 
Virginian 1 ' * 

Thackeray wrote, of Philadelphia, that he found 
''very good and kind friends" here, ''very tender 

186 



SOME ACTOES AND AUTHORS 

hearted and friendly"; and he writes that **the 
prettiest girl in Philadelphia, poor soul, has read 
* Vanity Fair' twelve times." He gives her '*a great 
big compliment about her good looks" and then sets 
down a gibe at her pronunciation in replying to the 
compliment: this, not from ill will toward the girl, 
but because he was nettled by the criticism of Phila- 
delphia newspapers regarding his own pronuncia- 
tion, which in some respects was London Cockney 
rather than English, and had such oddities as the 
persistent dropping of the **g" in words ending with 
that letter. 

Quite the oddest thing connected with his Philadel- 
phia visit was his casually making the statement, 
apparently apropos of nothing in particular, in a 
letter written from this city to Mrs. Brookfield, that 
**I can't live without the tenderness of some 
woman ' ' I 

Thackeray could not help being rude in America, 
but the manners and atmosphere of Philadel- 
phia checked him. It was at a city other than Phila- 
delphia that he boasted, at a dinner given to him, 
that he had himself given a dinner in New York 
which cost him four pounds a plate, adding that con- 
siderable of the expense was for wines, which turned 
out to be quite ordinary after all: ** About such as 
we are drinking here to-night." And it was not to 
a Philadelphia woman that he said, when she ex- 
pressed her gratification that he had asked for an 
introduction, that it was because he had heard of her 
as "the gayest woman in the South": but I think 

187 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

that more tlian one Philadelphia woman would have 
been capable of her swift and sweet retort: "Oh, 
Mr. Thackeray, you must not believe everything you 
hear ! I actually heard that you were a gentleman ! ' ' 
a retort which piqued and pleased the big man 
mightily. 

In letters innumerable he writes of the money he 
is making by his readings. In one letter, written 
from Philadelphia, he estimates that he has been 
reading at the rate of a pound a minute. In another 
letter, to another friend, also written from this city, 
he declares that he has made two thousand pounds 
since landing in America. He seldom ceases to write 
greedily of money, except to speak of some woman's 
good looks. He admires a young girl at one 
of his Philadelphia readings. "Lord! Lord! How 
pretty she was ! There are hundreds of such every- 
where, airy looking little beings." 

In a long letter from Baltimore in 1853 (how often 
one is made to wonder how the men of the past, with- 
out stenographers and typewriters, could write such 
an infinite number of infinitely long letters!), he 
takes up the formal summary of our three largest 
cities of his time. "I think I like them all mighty 
well. They seem to me not so civilized as our 
London, but more so than Manchester and Liver- 
pool." He has found at Boston "a very good 
literary company indeed." The society of New 
York is "the simplest and most unpretentious." 
Then he is just going to give the last word on Phila- 
delphia when the letter is interrupted; and when it is 

188 



SOME ACTOES AND AUTHORS 

taken up again and completed, in Washington, he 
has forgotten about Philadelphia and goes on with 
other subjects instead. 

Getting to Washington from Philadelphia, even so 
recently as that, was by no means the easy matter 
that it is to-day; at least it was not when Dickens 
ifirst made the journey, ten years before the visit of 
Thackeray; for Dickens went by boat to Wilming- 
ton, thence by train to Havre de Orace, there he 
crossed the Susquehanna by ferry, thence he con- 
tined to Washington by rail. 

The mention of Dickens and Philadelphia is re- 
mindful that he thought and wrote little of the city 
except as to its prisons. On his first visit he stayed 
at the United States Hotel, long since vanished, and 
found on leaving that in the bill was a charge for 
not only the time of his actual stay but for the full 
week before his arrival, because he had arranged in 
advance to be there sooner. At this hotel, too, was 
enacted a scene such as he describes in '' Martin 
Chuzzlewit"; for a great public reception unsuspect- 
ingly surprised him, and his arm was nearly torn 
off by a line of thousands of volunteer handshakers. 
He was guest of honor, too, in Philadelphia, at a re- 
ception or ball where, the ladies importuning for a 
lock of hair for each of them, and he refusing from 
an aversion to baldness, at his age, they bribed a 
waiter, got hold of the Dickens hat, and pulled off 
all the nap in little pieces to keep as souvenirs. 

It was between the times of the Dickens and 
Thackeray visits that, in 1845, there came to Phila- 

189 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

delphia a writer whose hat-nap was perfectly safe 
here; it was James Eussell Lowell, and he had 
recently married (his first romance, not his second), 
and although in time the Lowell house, Elmwood, in 
Cambridge, with some wealth, would come by in- 
heritance, he aimed first to make an independent 
position away from home, so as to be able to return 
conqueringly, when he should return, to Boston and 
Cambridge. 

But Philadelphia did not precisely welcome 
Lowell. Had he gone as a visitor it would have been 
different, but he went, apparently, with intent to be- 
come a resident, and so he was considered critically 
and left pretty much alone. The two made no 
social impression, because they boarded delightfully 
but modestly in the house mentioned in a previous 
chapter, at Fourth and Arch streets, "in a little 
chamber on the third story, quite low enough to be 
an attic, so that we feel classical in our environment ; 
and we have one of the sweetest and most motherly 
of Quaker women to anticipate all our wants, and 
make us comfortable outwardly as we are blessed in- 
wardly," as Mrs. Lowell wrote. A further pleasant 
touch comes from Lowell himself, as to "the little 
room in the third story (back), with white muslin 
curtains trimmed with evergreens." The house still 
stands; but the "Passing of the Third-Floor Back" 
came within the short period of five months. 

Lowell was very much of a social entity in Boston, 
where "the Cabots speak only to Lowells, and the 
Lowells — speak only to God": but here he was no- 

190 



SOME ACTOES AND AUTHOES 

body in particular. Oddly, too, lie made tlie un- 
forgivable social blunder of choosing to live north, 
of Market Street. He had written some charming 
verse, but that did not help him here; it is possible 
that, had he been a Pennsylvanian, he would have 
been compared to Anacreon and Shakespeare ; but as 
it was he was merely offered five dollars for an 
editorial, every two weeks, for the Pennsylvania 
Freeman, with the editorial privilege — which was 
exercised! — of rejection: in addition, he accepted an 
offer to write, for a New York publication, the 
Broadway Journal, a column or so a week at the 
same rate that the editor was paying Edgar Allan 
Poe : one dollar a column ! Mrs. Lowell did what she 
could, by translating, for an infinitesimal sum, a few 
of the poems of Uhland. So the couple very soon 
heeded the call of Cambridge. Lowell, while here, 
wrote of some long since forgotten Philadelphian 
named Elwyn, that ''he is somewhat literary for 
Philadelphia"; which caustic phrase would make it 
seem that there could be no particular grief on his 
part in parting from the city. And, too, it would 
seem that he and his wife were united in the feeling 
that an expected new edition of Lowell should ap- 
pear in Cambridge. 

The unhappy Edgar Allan Poe was happy for a 
time in Philadelphia, for he was assistant editor of 
Graham* s Magazine for practically three years, up 
to 1842, and for that time he and his wife had enough 
to eat. Graham's had every writer of any promi- 
nence. In this Philadelphia magazine appeared work 

191 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

by Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Hawthorne, 
J. Fenimore Cooper — the list is amazing. Graham 
boasted that some of the numbers cost. him $1500 for 
the authors alone, Cooper being the most highly 
paid. Poe, when he quitted the editorship and be- 
came a contributor, received the rich remuneration 
of four dollars a page. 

Poe's necessities, and his varying income, caused 
him to shift his home now and then, but for the best 
part of his Philadelphia living he and his wife oc- 
cupied a little cottage which stood against a large 
house at what is now 530 North Seventh Street, at 
the corner of Brandywine. 

The house against which his tiny cottage leaned 
is still there ; and Poe would have been amused could 
he have seen the sign on the front of the building 
across the way, for it is, "Philadelphia Society of 
Free Letts"; whatever that may mean; and indeed, 
to avoid misunderstanding it is translated into, ''Fila- 
delfijus Brihwo Latwju Beedriba." Poe would have 
written a whimsical mystery tale about this place of 
mysteriously whimsical words. 

Mayne Keid, shortly to become the famous Captain 
Mayne Reid, seems to have been their principal 
visitor and friend; at that time a struggling Phila- 
delphia journalist, he was shortly to win his military 
title in the Mexican War, after which he hurried to 
Europe to fight alongside of Kossuth, only to find the 
fighting over; on which he settled in London and 
began to write the books that so fascinated boys of 
every age. And the finest thing in his career was 

192 



SOME ACTOES AND AUTHOES 

his devotion to the Pees, when he was a Philadel- 
phian. 

Tradition tells of a wealth of flowers at the Poe 
cottage, of a tiny garden and a clambering vine, and 
of Poe's wife, so weak and wistful, playing on the 
harp ; and I was glad to find a tree there which may 
actually have sheltered the Poes, and the general 
character of the immediate neighborhood not greatly 
changed, with much of neatness, and with quite a 
number of houses still there which were neighboring 
houses to the poet's cottage. 

Another poet with a connection with Philadelphia 
was *'Tom" Moore, who was in America in 1804 and 
went about extensively, getting even to what was in 
that day the wilderness of Lake Erie. But it was, 
as he wrote, at Philadelphia that he ** passed the 
few agreeable moments which my tour through the 
States afforded me," the rest of the United States 
being, to quote his own words further, but a 
"melancholy, heartless waste." On leaving the city 
he wrote some pleasant lines in regard to his impres- 
sions, ending with: 

**The stranger is gone — ^biit he will not forget, 
When at home he shall talk of the toils he has known, 
To tell, with a sigh, what endearments he met, 
As he stray 'd by the wave of the Schuylkill alone." 

In Fairmount Park is preserved an old cottage 
which is called ''Tom Moore's cottage," but with no 
particular reason, except that, in the course of his 
stay of ten days in the city, he was once in a while 

193 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

"within the limits of what is now the park, and visited 
at the mansion known as Belmont. This cottage was 
at that time the home of an Aunt Cornelia, who 
washed clothes and sold ginger cakes and spruce 
beer, and it may also have been a casual meeting 
place. 

The subject of poets is remindful that Philadel- 
phia may claim, as her own, Walt Whitman, for 
although his home was in Camden, that city is 
directly across the Delaware from Philadelphia, and 
is essentially part of the big city. Of Whitman, 
Philadelphia may on the whole be proud. He was 
not an unintelligible poet, and he was certainly not 
the **good" gray poet, but now and then he sounded 
a fresh strong note. When he wrote of great men 
he expressed himself in great lines. Grant was 
**Man of the mighty days — and equal to the days"; 
Washington was "E'en in defeat defeated not"; and 
as to Lincoln, his '* Captain, my Captain!" is nobly 
unforgettable. 

He lived at 328 Mickle Street, and Hamlin Gar- 
land, pilgriming thither, about 1890, describes the 
home as one in which a very destitute mechanic 
might be living; as he mounted the stair to Whit- 
man's room on the second floor Garland's sense of 
resentment increased, for there was not a particle of 
beauty or distinction or grace. Whitman himself, a 
majestic old man, was seated in an armchair, with a 
broad Quaker hat on his head; he was spotlessly 
clean, as to his clothes and himself, and Garland 
found him a placid optimist. 

194 



SOME ACTOES AND AUTHORS 

The typical Philadelpliian is likely to feel a fine 
sense of certainty. One of the historical writers of 
the city — there are several, so it may be any one of 
them — was telling me of a work on which he was en- 
gaged which was to cover a period which, as I knew, 
is notable for the conflict of authorities. I made 
some obvious remark regarding the difficulties he 
had set himself to surmount; but he only replied, 
calmly: ''There will be no difficulties. I shall 
merely write it all just as it was"; than which the 
Recording Angel could say no more. 

Before me lies a set of books written by that 
eminent Philadelphian, Doctor Benjamin Rush, and 
published in Philadelphia in 1794. The publisher is 
one Dobson, "at the Stone-House, No. 41, South 
Second Street," and at the close is a list of other 
books published by Dobson, with their prices; and 
never were there prices so bewilderingly odd. 

Pope's ''Essay on Man" cost thirteen cents and 
Goldsmith's "Deserted Village" fourteen; Per- 
cival's "Moral Tales" cost sixty-seven cents and 
Chesterfield's "Advice to his Son" fifty cents; 
Charlotte Smith's "Elegiac Sonnets" could be ac- 
quired for the moderate sum of fourteen cents, but 
Taplin's "Farriery" was two dollars and twenty- 
five cents, while at the same time Winchester's 
"Dialogues on Universal Salvation" cost sixty-two 
and a half cents. And thus the revel of oddity goes 
on. There is no dollar sign used in the list. There 
is no period after the dollars, with the cents follow- 
ing decimally. Dobson 's only way of expressing 

195 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

dollars was by the abbreviation *' dolls," and for 
cents the word "cents" had to be spelled out, and 
therefore to represent both dollars and cents in a 
price it was necessary to use the awkward form, '^2 
dolls, and 50 cents." 

It is a pleasure to Imow that Munchausen was in 
Philadelphia in Revolutionary days. To be sure, 
Miinchausens are with all armies and in all wars, and 
their stories often appear in the solemn guise of 
official reports ; but a Miinchausen was literally here, 
a Hessian officer, and I like to think that he was 
probably the son of that Baron Miinchausen who 
won fame by his delightful exaggerations. The 
famous baron was born in 1720, and was a soldier 
of fortune who fought in Eussia and Turkey, there- 
fore he could easily, from the dates, have been the 
father of the Miinchausen, the Hessian soldier of 
fortune, who fought in America and was for a time 
located in Philadelphia. And I set it down as an 
interesting hypothesis. 

Richard Harding Davis, war-correspondent, short- 
story writer and novelist, was a Philadelphian by 
birth, his father being a newspaper editor and his 
mother being Rebecca Harding Davis, well-known 
some years ago as a short-story writer; well-known, 
that is, outside of Philadelphia, for here she was 
known as the wife of Mr. Davis, the editor, just as 
I noticed in New Orleans, some years ago, when an- 
other Mrs. Davis, M. E. M. Davis, had similarly won 
appreciation throughout the country as a short-story 
writer, tliat in her home city she was scarcely known 

196 



SOME ACTORS AND AUTHORS 

except as the wife of Mr. Davis of the Picayune. 
The home of the Philadelphia Davis family was on 
South 21st Street, near Locust. 

When Davis, as correspondent, was in Cardenas 
in Cuba, he was told that the American Consul there 
had been a correspondent in the Franco-Prussian 
War, so he asked the consul if he had chanced to meet 
a correspondent of that war, a German student 
named Hans, of whom Archibald Forbes, the most 
famous war correspondent, had made special men- 
tion. The consul smiled. **I'm the man," he said; 
''only, I was never a German, and my name is not 
Hans, as Forbes had it, but Hance, and I was born 
and raised in your own city of Philadelphia." 

In the days of the old horse cars, in Philadelphia, 
Richard Harding Davis, then a mere boy, one day 
stumbled over the gouty foot of a fellow passenger, 
evoking a wild storm of picturesquely passionate 
profanity. The man with the gout was the actor 
Forrest: himself a Philadelphian, having been born 
here in 1806; he made his home here, died here in 
1872, and was buried in St. Paul's, on South Third 
Street, having left his fortune for the establishment 
of the Edwin Forrest Home, for actors and 
actresses, aged and indigent. 

In St. Petersburg — for it was not then Petrograd 
— ^Forrest met a fellow-Philadelphian, Dallas, the 
United States Minister to Russia, and Dallas told 
him that he was much bothered by an American who 
actually wanted to meet the Czar; an uncouth-look- 
ing American, so he described him, over six feet in 

197 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

height and carrying a cane that was really a club. 
A few days later Forrest found his fellow-towns- 
man in a state of petrified amazement: Dallas had 
just been to see the Czar, and had found there the 
uncouth American, actually sitting in close imperial 
conversation! Worse than that, the man had 
actually greeted Dallas with a condescending nod 
and the words, *'How d'ye do. Squire? I'm here!'* 
The man — ^whose name unfortunately was not re- 
corded — had managed to let the Czar know that he 
could give him ideas regarding military and other 
matters, and the Czar was so pleased with him that 
he made him a favorite at court, with one of the court 
carriages for his exclusive use. 

Forrest's first appearance was, as a boy, at what 
was then the new Walnut Street Theater; now the 
''old" theater, for it has passed the century mark, 
and is the oldest Philadelphia theater still standing. 
It is only a decrepit memento of the past, shabbily 
bedizened for melodrama; but in its amplitude and 
proportions, in its low-standing, frontal pillars, it 
is remindful of its dignified past. Forrest's last 
Philadelphia appearance was also at this theater. 
In all, the great ones of a century of the stage have 
appeared here, with even Sarah Bernhardt among 
those of recent years. The wonderful Kachel — what 
a sense of somber greatness is evoked by the mention 
of her name! — got her death here, for a draughty 
dressing room gave her a desperate cold, from which 
she could not recover, and she hurried back to her 
beloved France only to die. 

198 



SOME ACTOES AND AUTHORS 

The old Academy of Music, on Broad Street, of 
dignified appearance and excellent acoustic proper- 
ties, is still a place where excellent music is given; 
and it has fine traditions of the music and musicians 
of many years. 

During the Revolution, the city's theater was a 
large and ugly building on South Street; thus 
located, at what was then the edge of the city, be- 
cause there was a good deal of criticism of any 
theater at all. The British officers interested them- 
selves deeply in the theater, and at times they even 
appeared on the stage as actors. This theater was 
burned, not long after the building of the theater on 
"Walnut Street, but meanwhile it had afforded 
theatrical entertainment to President Washington 
himself as well as to a great number of other dis- 
tinguished people during Presidential residence here. 
One wonders if Washington knew that some of the 
scenery at which he looked was painted by Major 
Andre! There was a still earlier theater than that 
of South Street, and here, in 1749, ' ' Cato ' ' was given, 
this being, as a recent book on Philadelphia by a 
Philadelphian expresses it, with delightfully uncon- 
scious humor, ^'the first Shakespearean representa- 
tion in America"; — Shakespearean! 

Joseph Jefferson was born in Philadelphia, and 
John Drew was born in Philadelphia, and the parent 
Drews were long residents of this city, as actors and 
managers; and to Mrs. Drew came both fame and 
the love of the public. 

In spite of the city's important theatrical associa- 

199 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

tions, or perhaps on accotmt of them, Philadelphia 
has at times seemed arbitrary in her iudgments, and 
has not always followed that of other large cities; 
and from here the great Mansfield wrote to a friend 
in New York that he was on the point of inserting an 
advertisement in the papers which should read: 

**Mr. Richard Mansfield is sorry to disturb the in- 
habitants of Philadelphia, but he begs to announce 
that he appears every evening as King Eichard III.'* 




200 



CHAPTER XIII 



THE PLACE OP CLUBS 




[HERE are clubs and clubs. 
That is to say, there are 
Philadelphia clubs and there 
are others; the Philadelphia 
clubs being notable not only 
in their combination of age 
and traditions, with continu- 
ance of present-day impor- 
tance, but in their profound 
influence upon the basic char- 
acter of the city. The clubs 
of Philadelphia were a vital force in giving the city, 
long ago, its distinguishing qualities, and they still 
hold the city to the possession of those qualities. 
The characteristic clubs of Philadelphia, strong and 
long established, gray with age, are fortresses which, 
hold in exclusiveness the exclusive people who 
unitedly make up what is really Philadelphia. 

It is not a matter of how much the old clubs total 
in membership. The importance is in their undis- 
puted holding of authority; an authority never 
spokenly claimed but always unspokenly conceded. 
It lies in the unbroken continuance of social rule, in 
the stepping into line of sons and grandsons to fill 

201 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

gaps made by death. The old clubs are the bulwark 
of the social organization which makes Philadelphia 
so enduring an aristocracy. 

And, too, the standards and characteristics of the 
older clubs have had profound influence upon the 
newer clubs. As new clubs arise and begin to 
develop, it is noticeable that they seem shortly to 
have become unconscious copies; they age rapidly; 
they look old though in years they may be young. 
Like the boys and girls of Maarken, who go about 
in clothes which exactly follow the ancient type of 
costume of their elders, the men's and women's clubs 
of the Philadelphia of to-day and yesterday seem 
like those of an ancient Philadelphia time. 

At the corner of Thirteenth and Locust streets, in 
the short block which separates the Historical Society 
and the Philadelphia Club, is something that seems, 
in a sense, to stand for both the society and the club ; 
for it is a thing of history, with roots down into the 
past, and it is at the same time a living thing of to- 
day. It is a cypress tree, here in the heart of this 
close-built, close-paved central portion of the city. 
By some impossibility it has fixed and fastened it- 
self, rooted itself, in a tiny narrowness between curb 
and sidewalk. It would not be surprising in a park 
or a woodland, although it is not, hereabouts, a 
common tree even in parks or woodland. But that 
it survives, here in this impracticable place, is very 
surprising indeed. Old men who have known it for 
years, love to watch its springtime bourgeoning, its 
setting forth of the first vague filminess of green; 

202 



THE PLACE OF CLUBS 

year by year they note its growth to a deeper and 
thicker fernlike luster, year by year they note the 
turning of the leaves to the dull orange brown that 
presages their falling. 

The old Philadelphia Club stands in popular fancy 
as the dean and leader of all the city's clubs, for, 
although by no means the oldest, its central location, 
the dignified old building which is its home, the 
strength of its membership, past and present, in 
character and influence, its reserve, its quiet pride, 
its exclusiveness, unite to give it distinction. In its 
ordered charm, and its perfect peace, it shows what 
a club, in this city, can be. 

It is housed in a long, broad, old building of dulled 
brick, at the corner of Walnut and Thirteenth streets, 
a building of three stories and a dormered attic in 
height, and a high basement, making full five stories 
in the gable, where, high up, there is a charming little 
balcony, bearing a flagstaif which rises above the 
peak. The building stands flush with the sidewalk, 
and its entrance is a dignified door at the very corner 
of tlie building; a building so wide as to be fronted 
with a row of six generous windows besides this 
door, and in the second story seven windows. This 
is the house which was built to be the Philadelphia 
home of that Southern Senator, Butler, whose grand- 
son married Fanny Kemble, but in size and im- 
portance it has all the appearance of a club house. 

Even more interesting than the outside is the in- 
terior, with its far-stretching length of halls, its fire- 
places and cornicing, with everywhere the atmos- 

203 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

phere of mellowness and serenity ; and in the dining- 
room is the mighty mahogany table of some twenty- 
five feet in length, with old-time silver urns at either 
end and a table-service of old-time imported Canton 
for dinners. 

In the old days, and indeed in modern days np to 
the sudden change in public feeling that has so 
recently come, wines used to be an important feature 
of a good club 's outfit ; and it is more than tradition 
that this club was no exception. Philadelphia loves 
to tell, too, that three members of this club were 
dining, one evening, at the home of one of them, and, 
they being very old and close friends indeed, and 
feeling even more intimate than usual, the subject 
arose of what rare old wines really cost, taking into 
consideration not only the original price but the in- 
terest as well ; whereat all three took out pencils and 
laboriously figured, and suddenly the host, with a 
startled look, exclaimed: **I bought this lot of wine 
over forty years ago and I've just found out what it 
has cost me with compound interest! And I'll have 
the rest of it up to-night so we can drink it and stop 
the confounded interest!" 

It was this club at which a visitor, passing 
through the city, applied in vain for the address of 
one of its members whom it was important that he 
should see. ** "Write a letter and address it to him 
in care of the club," he was told. But, he explained, 
he had to leave the city within a few hours. Finally, 
after argument galore, the desired information was 
reluctantly given. The member was dead! And 

204 



THE PLACE OF CLUBS 

even that, so reluctantly vouchsafed, might be ob- 
jected to on the ground of indefiniteness of reply 
after all. 

The Philosophical Society is perhaps not literally 
a club, but at least it has more than its share of the 
exclusiveness of an old Philadelphia club, and is at 
least essentially a club, with its own little old- 
fashioned building, adjoining the State House, con- 
taining wealth of material regarding early American 
history. In one of its rooms Washington sat for his 
portrait to Charles "Willson Peale, and also, on ac- 
count of his liking for Peale, permitted his son Rem- 
brandt, a lad of eighteen, frightened and fluttered 
by the honor, to make a drawing of him: the only 
portrait which Eembrandt Peale made of him from 
life, although he afterwards painted a large number 
from this original drawing, aided by memory of the 
great man's appearance, and the study of Houdon's 
statue. The mantelpiece in front of which Washing- 
ton sat, and which was pictured by both the Peales, 
was years ago unphilosophically torn out and thrust 
as rubbish into the cellar. 

The Philosophical Society was organized by Ben- 
jamin Franklin, more than a century and a half ago, 
and there are members to-day who are able to boast, 
proudly, that some ancestor or even ancestors were 
members in the long ago ; just as stockholders of the 
Philadelphia Library hold with pride the original 
stock certificates issued to ancestors of the 1700 's. 
And that, here, is typical; and it stands for the sur- 
vival of brotherly love. 

205 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

Benjamin Franklin was the first president of this 
still continuing society, and that other statesman- 
scientist, Thomas Jefferson, was its third president. 

One of the members was the white-robed Brother 
Jabetz, of that fascinating and altogether un-Ameri- 
can community of Ephrata, whose ancient monastic 
buildings, with their rooms of more than prison- 
like narrowness, still remain, out near Lancaster. 
Jabetz, devoted scientist that he was, used to walk 
into Philadelphia to attend the meetings, a walk of 
eighty miles in each direction. And such was his 
love for the new Eepublic as well as for science, that 
he translated the Declaration of Independence into 
seven languages; something of which probably no 
other American of that time was capable. Another 
connection of the Declaration with the Philosophical 
Society, besides those of Jefferson and Jabetz, was 
that, not long before the Eevolution, a platfarm was 
erected by the society, beside the State House, from 
which the Transit of Venus was to be observed, and 
that it was from this platform that the Declaration 
was first read to the people of Philadelphia. 

Among the most delightful of the city's clubs, and 
possessing even more than a usual degree of exclu- 
siveness, is the Wistar Party. To belong to this 
very limited club, membership in the Philosophical 
Society is prerequisite, and even that is by no means 
a certain open sesame, a unanimous vote of the 
Wistar members being required. And it is a club 
such as could come to existence in no other city than 
this. 

206 



THE PLACE OF CLUBS 

Doctor Caspar "Wistar was one of the descendants 
of a Wistar who was one of the early settlers of 
Pennsylvania. There were, indeed, two Wistars, 
brothers, and in course of time the descendants of 
one spelled their name **Wister" while the others 
continued it as ''Wistar": or it may be doubtful 
which was actually the original spelling: but at any 
rate, by some freak, some whimsy, there came to be 
a social cleavage, and those of the Wistars with an 
''a" were gradually given, in general estimation, a 
higher social standing than the Wisters of the ''e.'* 
And this long-ago distinction has continued so 
strongly in force, even up to present times, that you 
will find many prejudiced and precise people, if they 
chance to speak of Owen Wister the distinguished 
author, consider, as much more important than his 
<' Virginian," the fact of whether his wife, also a 
descendant of the early Wistars, is of the present- 
day '*e's" or *^'a's." 

Doctor Caspar Wistar was a surgeon of high pro- 
fessional standing, and at the same time a man of 
highest social standing. He was also a man of most 
hospitable ways, and he gathered at his house, one 
evening in each week, numbers of his closest friends, 
with the understanding that any distinguished 
visitor from out of town was also to be brought by 
any of them. It was a gathering for men only, and 
the club still holds to that old-time rule. Wistar died 
in 1818, but so important had the parties become, as 
social features, that it was decided to continue them, 
and the club was formally organized, to meet in turn 

207 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

at the homes of the members. And evenings with 
the Wistar Party are among the most delightful 
experiences that this city can offer. The form of 
invitation, for visitors, is still the form of long ago : 
a card, headed ''Wistar Party," bearing a little 
vignette of Doctor Wistar. 

And the doctor is remembered in one of the most 
charming of all possible ways, for there is named 
after him a vine which clambers up the front of 
myriads of houses in this and other cities, in this 
and other countries, one of the most beautiful of all 
flowering vines, delicately tossing to the breeze the 
pale purple of its plumes; for the French botanist 
Michaux, who visited America, and met Wistar, and 
loved him, named in his honor the Wistaria. 

The old Wistar House still stands, carefully 
tableted and preserved, and is one of the most in- 
teresting of early Philadelphia homes. It is at the 
southwest corner of Locust and Fourth streets, in 
the heart of the ancient city, and is of the familiar 
double-hued time-dulled red brick with black head- 
ers; but the brick is laid in an unusual bond, which 
shows not only lines horizontally straight, but also 
lines of diagonals. 

Here in Philadelphia, even the University Club, a 
modern institution as in other cities, has already ac- 
quired all the aspect of the old, for it is housed in 
an old residence on Walnut Street, a little west of 
Broad, and has already acquired a full share of the 
calm serenity, the assured decorousness, which usu- 
ally come only with age. 

208 




THE STREET OF LITTLE CLUBS 



THE PLACE OF CLUBS 

Even the modern Art Club, in its costly modern 
building, is beginning to be touclied with an aspect 
as of age, in a certain steadiness, a typical quiet, 
to be attained in full degree, in America, only in this 
city. It has also, like the old clubs, shown capacity 
for achieving the unusual; as, in the reception it ar- 
ranged, a few years ago, to Amundsen, who first 
reached the South Pole, Captain Peary, of North 
Pole fame, and Sir Ernest Shackleton, also of such 
distinction in polar exploration. I remember how 
extremely interesting it was to meet three Polar ex- 
plorers of such remarkable achievements in one single 
group. 

You will hear of vague traditions, or of memories 
almost as vague, of clubs which centered about the 
Schuylkill region; there was a skating club, whose 
members carried ropes to rescue such of the women 
or girls as should break through; the ice of the 
Schuylkill always having deceitful qualities near the 
dam and the falls at the water-works. And of course 
it was all a very exclusive matter, and none but men 
of this set might carry ropes and none but girls of 
the same set were to fall in and be rescued. 

And there is still a clubhouse, not far above the 
dam, for ladies; a most quiet little club — primarily 
for boating and canoeing, and just the place for a 
pretty dance to be given by a mother for her young 
daughter, not quite "out," or for bridge parties, or 
afternoon teas, and twice in the spring and twice 
in the autumn for a special luncheon for members. 
In describing such things from the Philadelphia 

209 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

standpoint the word ''exclusive" is from necessity 
quite overworked! 

Philadelphia is naturally a clubable city: to use a 
word beloved of Doctor Johnson, himself a mighty 
club man; and of clubs for women the Acorn is of 
marked interest. It is located on Walnut Street, oc- 
cupying an old mansion as quiet and unostentatious 
as itself; the mansion possesses the distinction of a 
smallish garden beside it, entered from the street by 
a beautiful gateway with white marble pillars and 
wrought-iron grille. ''It is so pretty to give a dance 
here for a daughter," said one of the members. "It 
is so safe," added another, simply: "safe" being a 
word still honored in Philadelphia society. 

It is not a club with a set motive, it stands for no 
"ism" or reform: it is just a delightful meeting 
place for delightful women, it seems to be delight- 
fully managed, and in the old-time house that it has 
acquired in the choice residential district near 
Kittenhouse Square it has acquired not only the 
typical look of permanence but the appearance of 
having been in existence for a very long time. 

The college women of Philadelphia follow tradi- 
tions of the city's club life in their College Club, and, 
in their quiet, broad-fronted, properly-located old 
mansion, carry on their very modern activities in the 
atmosphere of the mellow and the old. And there 
are other clubs for women. One, Centennially de- 
scended, is on Twelfth Street, and teems with twen- 
tieth century activities. And "West Philadelphia, a 
great residence city in itself, has one of the most 

210 



THE PLACE OF CLUBS 

active womaii's clubs in the country, the Philomusian, 
which began romantically in a stable. 

The Union League, located centrally, on Broad 
Street, is a club of huge membership, composed of 
men who represent the professions and business. It 
dates from the time of the Civil War. It is Eepubli- 
can ; but this has been so strongly a Eepublican city, 
in fact so overwhelmingly so, that thus far this 
restriction has not greatly narrowed its representa- 
tive quality. 

Its great Lincoln Hall, with its dignified propor- 
tions, its somber Hall of Fame, the many paintings 
of Americans of modern days, all aid in giving the 
great club-house individuality and importance. The 
paintings are particularly interesting, for, leaving 
to other associations or organizations the preserva- 
tion of portraits of men of the Revolutionary and 
early formative years, the Union League has gath- 
ered portraits, that in time will become invaluable, of 
Grant and Stanton and Burnside, of Meade and Roose- 
velt and Dewey, of Thomas and Sheridan and Pope 
and Meade, and many another of the moderns. 

The club has already taken on that curious typical 
look of always having existed and of promising to 
exist forever. Yet it is a tremendously busy club, 
with hundreds of members lunching here every week- 
day. And yet, even at midday there are long 
stretches of quiet halls, and there are restful and 
quiet rooms, and there is a library, with case after 
case of books, and here — a sight not to be seen in 
New York or Chicago or even Boston — ^you will see 

211 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

numerous men sitting, at noontime, quietly reading 
as if the afternoon had no demands. And entered 
by a door under the steps which the men ascend, is 
a great dining-room for tlie wives of members, and 
so famous is the cuisine that the room is crowded 
daily at luncheon. 

Fox-hunting has been a feature of social life since 
before the days of the Eevolution, and the first 
formal fox-hunting club was formed in 1766, with 
such names as Chew and Wharton and Willing, 
Cadwalader, Mifflin and Morris. A sport thus 
sanctioned by the most august names could not avoid 
popularity in perpetuity. Foxes still conveniently 
abound within much of the territory close to the city ; 
I have seen them running, wild and unpursued, with- 
in a dozen miles of City Hall; and there are several 
hunting clubs still existent, including the Eose Tree 
Hunt, the Whitemarsh, the Radnor, the Meadow- 
brook. And it is a pretty sight to see the hunters 
come sweeping across the fields, ^mth. their horses 
leaping the stone boundary walls, and with the 
scarlet-coated M. F. H. in the lead. 

Golf clubs are also numerous in the Philadelphia 
suburbs, perhaps the most widely known being the 
Huntington Valley, with its so highly attractive 
grounds. In the days that now seem old, though 
really but a few years ago, it was customary here, 
on the part of some of the members, to apply the lines 
that Pope almost wrote: 

"A little drinking is a dangerous thing; 
Drink deep, or taste not the golf -playing spring." 
212 



THE PLACE OF CLUBS 

And I remember, one night, being on a south-bound 
trolley which stopped on the hill, at the clubhouse, 
for several of the members; the first managed, with 
difficulty, to reach the platform, only to lunge ahead 
and stumble to the pavement upon the other side. 
The second and third did the same, amid hilarious 
cries of joy. The fourth managed to check himself, 
the conductor sharply rang the bell, and the car went 
on. 

*'The Street of Little Clubs" is a fascinating 
feature of the city. It is also a unique feature. No 
other city has a street precisely like it. It is remind- 
ful of some parts of the Latin Quarter, but it is really 
not like the Latin Quarter. It is distinctly and dis- 
tinctively American. Outwardly, it is a bit of 
American antiquity. To enter the street is like 
stepping back into the past century. It is a pic- 
turesque street. And it is fresh and charming, 
though it bears the marks of age. 

^'The Street of Little Clubs" runs south from 
Walnut Street, between Twelfth and Thirteenth. 
Of course it has another name, and that is Camac 
Street. It is a narrow street ; in fact, it was laid out 
as one of the early, old-fashioned alleys, with demure 
little homes along either side. And many of the 
houses are still here, dormer-windowed, low, squatty, 
dumpy, small; yet always picturesque. 

The street itself is rough-paved, giving thus an ad- 
ditional aspect of age, and the sidewalks are waver- 
ing and uneven and narrow, and the central pave- 
ment is so narrow that automobiles cannot pass, as a 

213 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

single car fills the space from curb to curb. And 
along the curb lines are rows of iron posts which 
look like cannon, set in with muzzles downward, in a 
revel of the erratic as to angles. 

In front of some of the quaint little houses are 
little signs, as if they were inns ; but they are club 
signs, marking the club homes of some of the most 
interesting organizations of the city. 

One is the Plastic Club, a club for women artists 
and sculptors, another is the Sketch Club, a name 
which indicates what it really is. One, the Coin d'Or, 
was organized with the delightful artistic Intent of 
keeping alive the best traditions of French cooking. 
Among the others — for I need not name every one — 
is the Poor Richard Club, thus named to honor the 
patron saint of the city; and most important of all is 
the Franklin Inn, which is not an inn, but a club also 
named in honor of the greatest of all Philadelphians. 

These demure, old-time, little houses, with their 
fronts and shutters now showing blue or yellow or 
red or gray, or perhaps saffron or pink — for the 
colorists have not been content with the dun and the 
drab! — show interiorly much greater space and 
spaces than is indicated by the outsides, for several 
of them, notably the Franklin Inn, have turned two 
small houses into one, by taking out dividing walls, 
and most if not all have at least one large room, 
made by the throwing of the upstairs space into un- 
partitioned spaciousness. Behind some of them are 
little gardens, and they are likely to be classic in 
design. 

214 



THE PLACE OF CLUBS 

The big rooms are used for exhibitions, for meet- 
ing places, for lectures, for theatricals. Their ways 
are ways of pleasantness and all the arts increase. 
The clubs stand for all that is best in artistic advance- 
ment. Here the sacred fire is kept burning, rather 
than in more pretentious places in more pretentious 
quarters. And that the arts include not only paint- 
ing and modeling and cooking, but writing, is shown 
by the Franklin Inn, which stands not only for 
picture-makers but, more distinctively, for the Phila- 
delphians who aim at distinction with novels or 
histories, with plays or essays or short stories, with 
newspaper work or with education. And a general 
note of all the Little Clubs is the absence of extrava- 
gance. 

It seems impossible, incredible, but Philadelphia 
possesses the oldest existing club organization in the 
world, at least of those whose members speak the 
English language. It was founded in 1732, under 
the name of the Colony in Schuylkill, but changed its 
name in 1783 to the State in Schuylkill. 

This oldest of all clubs, whether in England or 
America, was organized with the love of fish and 
fishing as its basis, and at first, and for a long time, 
it was located on the Schuylkill Eiver, from which 
river it was driven by the growth of the city's manu- 
facturing and by public parks, and it sought refuge 
on the banks of the Delaware, near Andalusia, on the 
way to Bristol; thither, too, it removed its ''castle" 
and there lovingly set it up; this ''castle," as they 
call it, being a plain small building, of frame, look- 

215 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

ing something like a rural chapel, with round-topped 
windows and tiny cupola. But this '* castle" is a 
serious matter, for it is one of the fortresses of ex- 
clusiveness. The Philadelphia Almanach de Gotha 
might be made up from the membership lists, past 
and present, of a few old organizations, and this is 
markedly one of the few. 

It is limited to a membership of twenty-five. It 
has a governor and council, the principal councillor 
being secretary of state. It has sheriff and coroner 
and purveyor, and others. Few of the twenty-five 
are plain citizens. There are also ''apprentices," 
waiting their chance of membership, and they must 
qualify as excellent cooks, and must serve the others 
''cheerfully." The apprentices, all of them young 
men of family, must eat standing, unless asked to 
sit; and it is expected that their training will make 
them so expert as to turn the broiling fish in air. 

At their formal meetings the members still drink, 
standing, the toast of "Washington." And their 
"fish-house punch" is famous for savor and for 
potency, and the secret of its concoction is jealously 
kept. 

Lafayette, on his visit to this country half a 
century after his first coming, was made an honorary 
member of the State in Schuylkill, and went to the 
"castle," and, invested with white linen apron and 
broad straw hat, stood before the fire and did his 
part as cook. And he said, felicitously, that with 
this coming to the State in Schuylkill he had now 
completed his tour of all the States in the Union. 

216 



THE PLACE OF CLUBS 

The oldest in years of the original list of 1732 was 
Thomas Stretch, who, for it began as a club of young- 
ish men, was bom in 1695. He was made the first 
governor, and, such being the typical Philadelphia 
respect for age and experience, he was continued 
as governor until his death in 1766. The next gov- 
ernor, Samuel Morris, governed from that year to 
1812. Only two governors from 1732 to 1812 1 

An ardent collector of Germantown showed me one 
day a piece of old silver which, she said, had belonged 
to a governor of Pennsylvania, Samuel Morris; and 
she was amused to find that he had been Governor of 
the State in Schuylkill. 




CHAPTER XIV 



A CITY OF THE CLASSIC 




HEREVER one 
turns, in Philadel- 
phia, down any 
street, in any quar- 
ter of the city, one 
may expect to come 
upon buildings, new or 
old, designed on classic 
lines, with Grecian pil- 
lars and porticoes. 
The people should be 
connoisseurs of the 
classic, for the city is 
sprinkled with the 
classic, and its architects know and love the classic. 
This is largely owing to the influence of that 
Nicholas Biddle with whom, as head of the United 
States Bank, President Andrew Jackson carried on 
a contest. Biddle 's love for the classic in archi- 
tecture was intense, and being a man of wealth and 
influence his influence in this particular was strong. 
Nor did he exert classical influence on public 
buildings or churchly buildings alone. He carried 
out his ideas superbly with his own property. On 

218 



■uAiutw iitwauuiajAjiui^iiy;-.j3jinj^jj5ijj;5j^aa,^3j^^ 



A CITY OF THE CLASSIC 

his great estate of Andalusia on the Delaware Eiver, 
on the way to Bristol (to be Philadelphian, one 
should mention that the estate belonged to his wife 
and thus came under his control), on this estate he 
built a mansion, with splendid classic-pillared front, 
a mansion notable not only for its pillared beauty, 
but for the beauty of its setting, with the great river 
sweeping by in front, with towering trees, with grass 
and greenery and seclusion, in all a triumph of 
beauty. 

It used to be that the name **Biddle'' stood in the 
public mind for '^ family" in Philadelphia, in a semi- 
jesting way ; and it is still told that at the reception 
given to the Prince of Wales, some sixty years ago, 
so many people were pointed out by the mentor who 
stood beside him, as ''Biddies," that he asked, after 
a while, ' ' Pray, tell me, what is a biddle ? ' * But the 
family can point to sober prominence in business 
affairs, and to honorable prominence in the various 
wars of our country, as well as to the architectural 
influence of the notable Nicholas. 

Among the finest of the classic buildings of the 
city is that of the old Girard National Bank, on 
South Third Street; a superbly proportioned 
structure, with central projecting pillared portico 
standing at the height of a few steps above the side- 
walk; this building being the oldest in the city that 
has classic pillars and portico, it having been built 
over a century ago. And, to show that age is not 
necessary to beauty, there is the unusually beautiful 
building of the Girard Trust Company, put up but a 

219 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

few years ago at Broad and Chestnut streets from 
the designs of Stanford White : a building nobly fol- 
lowing the Pantheon in inspiration. 

The stately dignity of the big Custom House on 
Chestnut Street, the graceful attractiveness of the 
broad-fronted Presbyterian church on Washington 
Square; such are among the old; and among the 
many new are some beautiful new classic buildings 
of charitable foundations far out on Broad Street. 

The influence of Biddle for the classic was backed 
and increased by that of Benjamin Latrobe, who 
designed several of the most beautiful early classic 
structures of this city, among them that architectural 
gem, judging from pictures, the building of the 
Academy of Fine Arts which was destroyed by fire 
and in place of which the Academy, rather than re- 
produce, put up its present queer structure on Broad 
Street. 

A few years ago I chanced upon a quaint little 
place called Fulneck, not far from Leeds in England, 
a village of the Moravians, which still bore the 
aspect as of Moravia, there in the heart of England ; 
a place of immaculate neatness and cleanliness and 
gentle courtesy, a place of quaintness of roof -lines 
and gables. It is situated upon the highway, but it 
retains an ancient right to close the highway, and 
at times exercises the right so that it shall not fall 
into desuetude; and, apparently as a consequence of 
this, the distance between the village and Leeds is 
threaded with shoulder-wide footpaths, running 
deviously for the most part, between stone walls 

220 



A CITY OF THE CLASSIC 

standing at more than a man's height; in all, a queer 
corner, oddly approached; but I did not know, while 
there, that this was the birthplace of the great Lat- 
robe, his father being a Moravian clergyman. 

The closing of the highway must have prepared 
Latrobe to notice, without the surprise which it used 
to cause to other newcomers, the Philadelphia system 
of roping off the streets, beside the churches, during 
the hours of worship, thus effectively enforcing 
quiet, a system in vogue here until some years after 
the architect's death. 

Largest and most ambitious of the classic fronts 
is that of the Eidgway Library, at Broad and 
Christian streets. It has a Doric-pillared frontage 
of well over two hundred feet, it is a stately structure 
of gTanite and it is devoted principally to the gather- 
ing of books and manuscripts relating to American 
history; fiction being altogether taboo. 

The son of the famous Doctor Benjamin Eush, of 
Eevolutionary times — of whom the intelligent Phila- 
delphian of to-day will speak, as naturally as if it 
were of yesterday, commenting that he probably lost 
the friendship of Washington through some connec- 
tion with the Conway Cabal; for a hundred years 
are but a day to the typical Philadelphian — the 
son of that distinguished doctor, himself a doctor 
not particularly distinguished, married a Eidgway. 
She was wealthy; he was far from wealthy. She 
loved gayety, he quietude. She loved the glitter of 
society and the presence of throngs of friends; he 
loved books and seclusion. 

221 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

She built a miglity mansion on Chestnut Street 
above Nineteenth. She gave dazzling social enter- 
tainments. Six thousand wax candles would be 
blazing, and there would be hundreds of guests. 
Her dinners were sumptuous affairs. 

But as a social leader she failed. She had not 
sufficient standing to begin with, and she tried to 
amalgamate South of Market Street with North, and 
this was the unforgivable sin. 

Naturally, there came, with the disappointment, 
bitterness and estrangement. It has even been 
whispered that there came jealousy; and a tale is 
vaguely told of a secret stair in that great mansion ; 
but likely enough it is based on nothing more than a 
desire to evoke some shadow of romance to go with 
the Arabian Nights tales of extravagant living. 

The wife died; and the huge fortune became the 
husband's. He died; and left it for the building of 
this library. It is officially a branch of the Franklin- 
founded Philadelphia Library, but never was money 
so wasted. It is a temple of learning, a treasure- 
house of the invaluable. But it is separated from 
the center of the city by the South Street neighbor- 
hood. It is really but a short distance away from 
where it ought to be. It is but ten minutes' walk 
from the heart of the city ; it is but a short ride ; it is 
less than five minutes by motor. But to this city, 
a minute to get to the wrong locality is more than 
an hour spent in getting to the right locality. No 
one goes to the. Ridgway. Even to historical 
students it looms in the imagination with its bookish 

222 



A CITY OF THE CLASSIC 

treasures, as if it were in some distant land. Most 
of the people of the city have never even seen the 
exterior of the building. It is a sort of myth. 

I have never seen more than three readers at one 
time in the huge building. I have seldom chanced 
to find even so many as three. I was there this very 
afternoon, and not a reader, besides myself, was 
anywhere within the mighty extent of space. As 
five o'clock approached, the closing hour, a man came 
in and, asking for some book, began to glance over it 
at the delivery desk; and I left him there, the sole 
reader or visitor. 

The location of the building was fixed by Kush 
on his deathbed; not content with putting his wife's 
money to a use with which she would have felt no 
sympathy, he ordered a building in a location that 
she would have intensely disliked. The courts were 
appealed to, on the ground of preventing waste of a 
fortune; but the dead hand bore too heavily. 

The Chestnut Street mansion was turned into a 
hotel apartment house, and so altered that no out- 
ward indication of the original remains; but there 
are stately rooms, corniced and high-ceilinged, which 
were rooms through which thronged the endless lines 
of the guests of the unhappy Mrs. Kush. 

The United States Mint, on Chestnut Street near 
Broad, was among the finest of the city's classic 
structures, and it had the admiration of every resi- 
dent and of every visitor. It was torn down, a few 
years ago, and the present Mint, a huge structure, 
was built on Spring Garden Street; rather an im- 

223 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

pressive building, put in a far from impressive loca- 
tion, but a disappointment when compared with the 
beautiful structure that it supplanted. 

Paul Revere of Boston would have become a Phila- 
delphian could he have obtained the position of 
Director of the Mint, for which he applied. But he 
had no political friends at our republican court and 
his application was disregarded. Combined artist 
and artisan that he was, he would have given the 
Mint and its products high distinction. 

The Franklin Institute, on Seventh Street, is a 
classic building of unusual lines. It is nearing the 
century mark and its dark gray stone is growing 
grayer and darker with age. Across its front are 
four square-sided pillars ; but on a second glance one 
notices that they are not really pillars, but pilasters 
so hea\^ and projective as to be buttress-like. It is 
a front of dignity, and of absolute plainness except 
for a row of classic wreaths across the square-lined 
frieze. The Institute, devoted to technical scientific 
education, is almost a century old, and proud though 
it is of its scientific library, it is even prouder in the 
possession of Franklin's electrical machine. 

A striking feature of the city is the extent to which 
it has built enclosing walls. The natural tendency 
of old-fashioned folk here has been to put up walls 
of stone or brick around meeting-houses, hospitals, 
burial-grounds, gardens, schooUiouses, private gar- 
dens, public or semi-public institutions. It has 
served to express the Philadelphia desire for privacy 
and at the same time has added a great deal of 

224 



A CITY OF THE CLASSIC 

picturesqueness. And Girard College carried the 
idea to such an extreme that its mighty extent of 
mighty wall is remindful of some British park-en- 
closing wall of endless length. And fortunately we 
have Girard 's own idea, expressed in his own words, 
as to the kind of wall that should be built around the 
grounds of his college (which, by the way, was not 
to be a college in the usual meaning of the word, for 
boys were to enter under ten and were to leave at 
not over eighteen). It was to be "a solid wall, at 
least fourteen inches thick, capped with marble and 
guarded with irons on the top so as to prevent per- 
sons from getting over;" but he omitted to state 
whether the intent was mainly to keep the boys in 
or other boys out. 

Within the walled enclosures are numerous college 
buildings which have from time to time been erected, 
but noblest of all, and one of the noblest classic build- 
ings of this or any other city, is the main building, 
with splendid lines of Corinthian pillars along the 
face and sides and back; there are thirty-four of 
these columns, and each is fifty-six feet high. The 
building is two hundred feet in length and one hun- 
dred and fifty in width, and a flight of ten steps sur- 
rounds the entire structure, 

Girard directed, in his will, that the building be of 
white marble, plain sided and thus severely simple, 
with white marble roof and without pillars. The 
architect, when ready to proceed, reported to the 
building committee that the walls would not stand 
the strain if the building should be put up as the wiU. 

225 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

directed. Fortunately, Nicholas Biddle, Nicholas of 
the Clfvssic, was a member of the committee and its 
ruling spirit, and he saw the opportunity for a 
superb display of classicism. The building should 
go up precisely as the will directed — ^but, to safe- 
guard it, there should be this line of mighty pillars 
on every side ! 

Girard was born in Bordeaux; from his youth he 
was a sailor ; and it was a fortunate chance that put 
the English ships outside of the Delaware capes and 
led him to settle in Philadelphia. He Americanized 
Etienne to Stephen; he became a merchant; *' mariner 
and merchant," as he loved to describe himself, the 
words sounding rhythmically pleasant to him. A 
shrewd, hard-headed, rigid man of business he was, 
a man whom none thought of as a man of special 
feeling or of love for the nicenesses of life. Yet, 
tireless worker though he was, stern, severe, exact- 
ing, he was ready to give with a liberal hand for 
excellent service, and in his home he had fine food 
and wines, and costly china, and fine furniture. He 
loved to entertain French visitors, and he had a pair 
of shoes for each separate day of the week, and his 
underclothing was of silk; yet he seemed only a 
plain, hard, prosaic man of business! When the 
yellow fever devastated and depopulated the city he 
went as nurse into the houses that reeked with the 
pestilence, and went about with the burial parties 
who cried dismally their dismal cry, *' Bring out 
your dead!" 
When he directed the founding of Girard College, 

226 



A CITY OF THE CLASSIC 

which, was to be for the education of poor orphan 
boys, he gave preference, first, to boys of Philadel- 
phia; secondly, to boys of Pennsylvania; next to 
those of New York, because that was the point he 
reached on his first voyage to America ; and lastly, to 
boys of New Orleans, that being the city with which 
he first traded as independent owner. 

His will directed absolutely that there be no re- 
ligious instruction in the college, and to make this 
sure he further directed that no minister of any 
denomination be even admitted within the grounds. 
The boys were to be taught morality and patriotism, 
and high ideals of life. 

The will was contested, and Daniel Webster was 
retained to break it; and the great orator was not 
above presenting, as his main argument, the claim 
that the will could not stand unless the distribution 
of property which was directed by it came under the 
head of charity, and that, as charity was not charity 
unless it was Christian charity, the will must be void. 
But the judges, listening tolerantly, merely smiled 
at such an argument in a State that had always stood 
for freedom of thought, and Webster went back to 
Boston defeated. 

In front of Girard^s store on Water Street, while 
he was still a youthful merchant, was a popular 
pump ; the only drinking water of the city was from 
street pumps in those early days ! And one day he 
noticed a pretty girl drawing a pitcher of water. 
The next day and the next he again saw and ad- 
mired her. Her name was Polly Lum: a name all 

227 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

ready and ripe for romance I The ardent young 
French-American promptly fell ardently in love 
with Polly Lum and Polly Lum loved as ardently 
in return. And so they were married. 

But only tragedy came. Poor Polly Lum's mind 
failed. Her child died almost as soon as it was 
born. It was necessary to place her in the Penn- 
sylvania Hospital, and there she lingered for 
twenty-five years. And Girard's grief was pitiful 
when the end at length came, and he stood beside her 
dead body. Poor Etienne! Poor Polly Lum! 

And after that the grim-seeming man went about 
in his yellow gig as before, but more alone, more 
lonely, more aloof. He thought of what good he 
could do with his huge and mounting fortune. He 
gave generously to the hospital that had sheltered 
his Avife. In the War of 1812 he loaned without 
stint to the nation. He gave freely for public uses, 
and his will perpetuates broad public uses. To the 
end of his life a man strict in all his business affairs, 
there was a fine nobility about him, and always, in 
his letters of instruction to the captains of his ships, 
was the clause which strictly forbade them to re- 
ceive on board any passenger or cargo other than 
his own, followed invariably by, **But if you meet 
with American seamen in distress you are to take 
them on board and bring them home free of ex- 
pense." 

But because his own life romance had been broken, 
because Polly Lum was dead and the child of Polly 
Lum was dead, and he was a wifeless and childless 

228 




THE CLASSIC PORTICO OF THE OLD GIRARD BANK 



A CITY OF THE CLASSIC 



old man, his heart went out to poor and orphan 
children, and thus came his plan for the college, with 
its noble foundation of five millions — a huge fortune 
for that time — ^whioh has now increased to over 
thirty-five millions. That splendid building stands 
for stern and noble romance. 

When, an old man of over eighty, Girard found 
himself facing death, he would not yield. Feeble, 
scarcely able to see, he went about Ms business af- 
fairs. He was knocked down and run over, but 
somehow managed to get home. But he would not 
stay in bed. ''I will get up!'* And he walked 
across the room, but only to grope his way feebly 
back again, refusing help. Then he put his shaking- 
hand to his head, and his quivering lips whispered 
something about * 'violent disorder": and with that 
he died. 









CHAPTER XV 

FROM CITY HALL TO MEMORIAL HALL 

HEN", in the very 
beginning, the pro- 
posed city was 
mapped out, what 
is now called City 
Hall Square was 
planned as the 
center. That was 
William Penn's 
_ own idea, and it 

was a farseeing 
idea. He believed that the city would so spread as 
to take in the territory between the Delaware and 
the Schuylkill, although to his associates and to the 
early settlers in general, what we know as City Hall 
Square was absurdly far away. 

It was a positive Quakeresque delight to Penn 
to map out the gridiron of right-angled streets, and 
to put a square in the middle between the two rivers, 
and to plan four other squares, equi-distant from 
the central square, at regularly spaced intervals. 
Franklin Square is directly north of Washing-ton 
Square, and east of Logan. Rittenhouse Square is 

230 



FEOM CITY HALL TO MEMOEIAL HALL 

directly soutli of Logan Square, and west of WasH- 
ington. The comparatively modern names of these 
squares are apt to give the erroneous impression that 
the squares themselves were modernly planned, in- 
stead of having been marked out in 1682, and actually 
laid out not long afterwards. There was a precise- 
ness about the plan, which appealed to Penn. And 
it may be noticed that, although the four subsidiary 
squares are regularly spaced, and equi-distant, as 
regards each other and as regards the north or 
south distance and direction from the center, yet 
there is divergence as regards the east and west dis- 
tances from the center, because, owing to some un- 
recorded reason, the central square was laid out 
a little more to the westward than was planned. 
To be precise, it is four hundred and ninety-six feet 
farther west than Penn intended it to be ; the change 
having probably been on account of some matter of 
swamp or rock or long since leveled hill. 

The city was slow in growing to William Penn's 
plan. For generations it hugged the Delaware, and 
only reluctantly and gradually came to the ideas 
of its founder. To all except himself there seemed 
to be nothing central about the central square; and 
although, following his instructions, a meeting-house 
was built there, in what is now City Hall Square, as 
early as 1685, all effort to hold services there was 
soon abandoned. 

Penn's plan was to have a meeting-house, a 
market-house, and the administrative buildings of 
the colony built in the central square; so that the 

231 



THE BOOK OF. PHILADELPHIA 

placing of City Hall there was measurably carrying 
out Ills plan. 

But it was a long time before City Hall came ; for 
much of that intervening time, in the old days, there 
were gallows and stocks and pillory in this central 
square, in the good old-fashioned way. It was a 
time of few opportunities for amusement, and the 
people would not be balked of such as it was feasible 
to have; the spectacle of a man in the stocks, or a 
woman being whipped, or a man being hanged, was 
not lightly to be foregone. William Penn himself, 
so we have it on his own authority, could hurry from 
a burning-alive, in London, to a hanging in another 
part of the city. So it was naturally to be expected 
that hangings and other punishments would be a 
public spectacle here in this new country as they 
were in the old. It is amazing, considering the spirit 
of the times, that the criminal code and the practice 
of it, in Pennsylvania, were not more savage than 
they were. 

"Within a dozen years or so of the foundation of 
the colony a man from across the Delaware was 
tried for the murder of a Philadelphian ; and the 
murderer was led to confess through showing fear 
that the corpse would bleed when he was com- 
manded to touch it; the bleeding of a corpse being 
an infallible test in early days. 

Of one kind of so-called crime, that of witchcraft, 
which so disgraced some other Colonies, there was 
never a trace in Pennsylvania, and this was owing 
to the firm and politic stand made by Penn himself. 

232 



FEOM CITY HALL TO MEMOEIAL HALL 

Almost at the beginning, in the year 1683, such a 
case came up, for two Swedish women were charged 
with being witches. Following the laws of England, 
the laws of Pennsylvania were necessarily against 
witchcraft ; but Penn himself was of the clearsighted 
few who even in those days paid no heed to the delu- 
sion. At the trial of the women he personally pre- 
sided, determined as he was to have no Salem 
shadow on his Colony, and he so pleasantly befuddled 
the witnesses and so tactfully advised the jury, that 
the verdict was such as would have delighted 
Solomon: for the women Were soberly held to be 
guilty of having been suspected of witchcraft, but not 
guilty of having acted as witches! And that ended 
witchcraft for Pennsylvania. 

What is now Logan Square was also the possessor 
of gallows and stocks and other grim accompani- 
ments; but it has also noble and fine memories, 
for here, in the time of the Civil War, the Sanitary 
Commission held a great fair, with immense throngs 
crowding the space; and most memorable of all is 
the memory that Lincoln was here during the fair, 
and that he spoke, briefly and effectively as always, 
and with a saddened gravity which came from his 
sorrowful sense of the pitiful loss of life that was 
pitifully continuing. 

Washington Square is full of somber associations. 
Facing out upon this square was the old prison which 
won such terrible prominence in the time of the 
British occupancy of Philadelphia through the cruel- 
ties inflicted within its walls upon American soldiers ; 

233 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

the provost being that Cunningham who is also 
notable in New York's annals of cruelty. It adds 
to the grimness, that it seems to have been a matter 
of money, Cunningham paying some man or men, 
higher up, for the privilege of exercising cruelties 
unchecked and then making what money he could, 
by cutting down on rations, and by levying blackmail 
from those who could pay for some shadow of 
humane treatment; meanwhile dealing starvation 
and death on every hand, partly for the very wanton- 
ness of it, partly to frighten more men into finding 
some means of getting money for him. He was paid 
by his government one guinea a day; but he grew 
enormously rich. 

It was a time of swindles and extortions, and the 
huge sums involved might be thought to be exag- 
gerated did they come on the authority of Americans 
alone; but details are given also by an Englishman, 
the historian Trevelyan, nephew of the historian 
Macaulay. And those who think that what we call 
''graft" is of modern or American invention, need 
to be reminded of such facts as, that the quarter- 
master who provided teams and horses for General 
Howe's campaign in Pennsylvania cleared, by that 
single transaction, one hundred and fifty thousand 
pounds. And, so the British tell us, many a Quaker 
meeting-house hereabouts was turned over to this or 
that British officer, for the use of his men, with huge 
sums paid ostensibly for rent; w^ien not a penny 
actually went to the Quaker owners. 

Great part of Washington Square was a Potter's 

234 



FEOM CITY HALL TO MEMORIAL HALL 

Field, and thousands of American soldiers, who 
died in prison, were buried there in unmarked 
graves, and there too were buried thousands of those 
who died when yellow fever swept the city. 

A vague story which has come vaguely down, is 
that a young girl, of unusual beauty, having com- 
mitted suicide, was forbidden burial in a churchyard 
and so was buried here; and that her family, filled 
with bitter anger at such treatment, were buried 
here beside her, when they came to die, each one 
giving formal directions that this be done and each 
in turn being laid in an unmarked grave. I have 
not come upon the story with dates attached, or any 
names, but it doubtless represents, with at least 
shadowy basis of truth, some forlorn episode of the 
long ago. 

In the central square, now City Hall Square, the 
gallows stood so long as to threaten to become per- 
manent; but fortunately there are also picturesque 
recollections in regard to this central space. What 
a sight it must have been, when Rochambeau was 
encamped there with six thousand French soldiers! 
And what a sight it was when Anthony Wayne 
camped there with his soldiers on the return from 
the splendidly successful campaign in what in the 
1790 's was the wilderness of Ohio ! And it has been 
thrilling to see, frequently, our own soldiers camped 
there, around scores of great motor trucks, on the 
last part of their journey from some inland city to 
some city of embarkation. 

At the beginning of the eighteen hundreds, a 

235 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

pumping station was built here, for the new city 
water-works, and as the disting-uished Latrobe was 
the architect, his structure, designed on his favor- 
ite classic lines, was likewise distinguished. A 
fountain, too, was here set up; a fountain made by 
the wood-carver, William Push; but as it was sup- 
posed to represent Leda and the Swan it brought 
heavy criticism upon the artist, for Leda was not a 
lady, from the city's standards, and the fountain 
was banished. And after a while the pumping 
station itself vanished, when the water-works were 
established beside Fairmount. 

In the 1870 's the huge City Hall was put up. It 
has a lofty tower, surmounted by a statue of Penn. 
Philadelphians grow eloquent over the marvelous 
height of this tower, comparing it with various 
cathedral towers of Europe as to altitude, and point- 
ing out that it reaches up five hundred and fifty feet 
above street level. That, however, is two hundred 
feet less, in height, than that of the Woolworth 
Building, in New York, which rises to seven hundred 
and fifty feet; so that in at least one direction 
modern business distances old cathedrals. Theo- 
retically, the tall tower dominates the city, but in 
reality the height is successfully hidden and appears 
rather low. Although, from a long distance away, 
there are a few viewpoints whence there is an ex- 
cellent effect, there is nothing of this near at hand; 
yet, in a way. City Hall has attained unique distinc- 
tion, as being the only huge structure in the world 
which gains no dignity by its size. 

236 



FEOM CITY HALL TO MEMOEIAL HALL 

On street cars crossing Broad Street you will see 
men and women bending and bobbing and swaying 
and peering outward and under and upward, as if 
devoutly posturing before a shrine, and the thought 
comes of their thus doing honor to the high-exalted 
image of William Penn up there on his tower, look- 
ing benignly and broad-brimmedly down; but it is 
really only that it has become the custom for every 
one to try to get a look at the far-up City Hall 
clock. 

For a great city, and a city which has led in art, 
Philadelphia is oddly short of statues that can be 
deemed excellent; in fact, the central portion of the 
city has few statues of any sort. There are some 
set about City Hall, however, among these being an 
unobtrusive statue of the *' merchant and mariner," 
Girard. The statue which attracts the most atten- 
tion is an equestrian of General Reynolds, and, with- 
out being a great work of art, it is a spirited and 
adequate representation of that gallant officer who, 
born near Philadelphia, was killed in the mighty 
battle, fought on Pennsylvania soil, at Gettysburg. 
Few, however, of the many who look with pride and 
interest at this statue of a Pennsylvanian, know that 
the statue is by that recipient of so much of nation- 
wide ridicule, Rogers of the plaster groups! This 
Reynolds shows that he could do, with skill and 
spirit, more than his groups ; and even they did much 
to point people toward ^artistic standards in an in- 
artistic period. 
Against the south front of City Hall is one of the 

237 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

masterpieces of sculpture. (As I write, it has been 
boxed and removed on account of subway work, and 
may not be put back in its original position here.) 
It represents the ''Puritan," the best of the works 
of that brilliant Irishman, Saint Gaudens; it is a 
replica of the original, which was put up beside the 
Connecticut Eiver, at Springfield; and down here 
in the Quaker City the ''Puritan" stands with odd 
effect. 

This statue, and that of Penn far up in the air, 
(literally "skied," if ever an artist's work was!) 
represent vividness of contrast. For the Quaker 
•stands, on top of the tower, a travesty on Penn, a 
travesty on Quakerism, impossibly benign, impos- 
sibly peaceful, impossibly lacking in manliness ; when 
it should have been remembered that Penn was a 
man of mental and physical vigor, of court training 
and bearing, a forceful man, who was determined to 
carry out his ambitions peacefully. And here is the 
contemporary Puritan as Saint Gaudens visualized 
him, with Bible in one hand and sturdy staff in the 
other, equally ready to fight or to pray, sternly 
stepping forward, domineering, aggressive and un- 
bending. 

In the past, Fairmount Park has been the most 
difficult to find and reach of any large park in any of 
the cities of the world, and this in spite of the fact 
that it begins within little more than a mile or so 
from City Hall. It is, too, by far the largest city 
park in the United States, and indeed in the world 
unless Denmark is justified in its claim of a four- 

238 



FROM CITY HALL TO MEMORIAL HALL 

thousand-acre city park as against the more than 
three thousand of Fairmount. 

Recently, at great expense, a parkway has been 
begun, and is indeed far on towards completion, 
stretching diagonally, in a broad straight line, from 
City Hall to the Spring Garden Street entrance of 
Fairmount Park, passing, on the left, the attractive 
building of the Academy of Natural Sciences, and on 
the right, facing out from Logan Square, the Roman 
Catholic Cathedral, a building all in brown stone, 
with a big dome rising from its center ; passing, too, 
on the right a felicitous entranceway which has been 
made, with all the reposeful effect as of age, into an 
old and high-walled graveyard and schoolyard of the 
Quakers, so as to have a fine entrance from the park- 
way ; and it is hoped that the entire parkway will in 
a short time be admirably bordered. 

At the Spring Garden Street entrance, at the end of 
the parkway, is a statue of Washington, of bronze on 
a granite base, which is notable among statues for the 
way in which it has been cluttered about with huge 
bronze animals and fish. This statue has been very 
much an object of admiration in this city of art 
leadership. The entire scheme displays marvelous 
thoroughness, not only with the variety of animals 
and fish and the number of huge symbolic human 
figures lolling in bronze, but in medallions which rep- 
resent every man who had any important part in the 
Revolution! It is noticeable that the general eifect 
is very like that of one of the big monuments, a 
^'denkmal," such as one sees in the big German cities. 

239 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

Even Washington, surmounting the heterogeneous- 
ness on horseback, is not permitted to ride as he 
actually rode, but like a German officer, and the tail 
of his horse is twisted into German-looking ringlets. 
It is a complete example of German ''thoroughness/' 
And all this, because it was actually designed by a 
German professor! 

This monument was erected by the Society of the 
Cincinnati, to honor him who was not only the first 
President of the United States but also the first 
president of that society. Contributions for its 
erection began to be collected over a century ago. 
And when money enough was gathered, the making 
of the monument and statue to honor this greatest 
of all Americans was entrusted to a professor of 
Berlin, who was something of a sculptor, and who 
made the monument in Germany and shipped it over. 

Here, where Spring Garden Street crosses the 
Schuylkill by a long double bridge, with its two dif- 
ferent heights for traffic, is the hill which in the long 
ago was specifically known as Fairmount and which 
gave name to the park. 

And here, at the river's edge, is a notable 
architectural achievement; here a beautiful classic 
effect was long ago secured, when the water system 
of the Schuylkill, for the supply of the city, was new. 

A considerable space is terraced and paved and 
balustraded, with the broad river stretching off, and 
the water, for the full width of the river, tumbling 
over a low fall; at one side is the double-bridge, at 
the other, and stretching up the bank of the stream, 

240 



FEOM CITY HALL TO MEMORIAL HALL 

are the boathouses of the pleasure craft, known as 
the '' Schuylkill Navy"; and facing out toward all 
this are the classic structures. 

There are three Greek temples; the center, the 
largest, being open like the temples of Paestum. 
The proportions and the Doric pillars of all three 
temple-like buildings are perfect; and they are not 
so large as to be out of place, but are quite small- 
ish; they are precisely right. 

Stone abutments of dull gray rise perpendicularly 
from the water, with a line of semi-lunettes, and with 
divisions in each of which is built a delightful little 
balcony, just above the level of the water. The abut- 
ments are +opped by a line of balustrades and it is 
behind thi ~j balustrade that the temple-like structures 
stand, in their uniform light gTay, which would be 
still more effective if white. 

It is beautiful, restrained, delightful; in this city 
so distinguished for its classic architecture, this 
group, with its setting, is thoroughly distinguished; 
even though, through some vandalistic utilitarian- 
ism, two other buildings, fortunately small, have 
been erected between the original buildings of classic 
inspiration. 

Underneath the terrace and the buildings, within 
and behind the abutment that rises sheer from the 
water, a utilitarianism that is altogether excellent 
has established the city's aquarium. 

And here, among these water-works buildings, are 
preserved some excellent examples of the unusual 
wood carving of William Rush. He was a Philadel- 

241 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

phian ; he was born in this city and died in this city ; 
he was the son of a ship carpenter, and early began 
making figure-heads for clipper ships and then made 
wooden statues. 

Here, several of the statues are preserved. Here, 
too, is his supposed Leda and the Swan; not the 
banished original of wood, but a replica that the 
city procured, in bronze; and it is not Leda at all, 
but a thoroughly irreproachable young woman, hold- 
ing aloft a bittern ; a graceful piece of work, deserv- 
ing its bronze permanence. 

It was a century ago that the wooden original was 
made. But as I paused to look at this bronze replica 
just the other day, a well-dressed, well-to-do mother 
and daughter swept up and eyed it for a moment 
critically. And then came a remark which could not 
have been made in any other city of the world, after 
the lapse of a century; it was a remark all by itself, 
neither preceded nor followed by any other words; 
it was the kind of remark which, to typical Philadel- 
phians, illuminates and terminates every subject; 
for the mother said: ''Polly Vanuxem posed for 
that;" quite as if it were yesterday! And with that 
the mother and daughter swept on. Again one sees 
that in this city a hundred years are but a day, in 
matters of family. 

The vast park is a place of beauty. It is splen- 
didly diversified, with levels and rolling sweeps, with 
masses of trees and trees in isolation. Through the 
park flows the delightful Schuylkill, and dotted here 
and there are old mansions which the city has 

242 



FEOM CITY HALL TO MEMOKIAL HALL 

preserved. Into the Schuylkill flows the Wissa- 
hickon, and the valley of this little stream has been 
made a part of Fairmount Park; and never was 
there a more altogether charming bit of park than 
this Wissahickon portion, with rippling water, and 
high steep cliffs, and trees and bushes and flowering 
shrubs, all combined in a sort of joyous beauty. 

There is an enormous medleyed monument in 
Fairmount, of tremendous height and curious 
elaborations, which was put up under the will of a 
typefounder, Eichard Smith. It is essentially a 
military monument, with the statues of various gen- 
erals here and there upon it, and with the type- 
founder's own statue not very prominently perched. 

It was in Fairmount Park that Philadelphia set 
her Centennial Exposition. It was nobly conceived, 
nobly planned, nobly carried out. The National 
Government aided with a loan of a million and a half 
dollars, and Philadelphia likes to say that the loan 
was repaid and that a dividend of $1.73 was paid 
upon each share of stock after all expenses were 
met. The city still points to this financial achieve- 
ment with justifiable pride. 

The Centennial — one seldom adds the word 
** Exposition," — did an immense amount for the 
United States in awakening and educating the entire 
nation. General foreign travel had not begun, so it 
was extremely illuminative that the best of the 
products and achievements of the entire world were 
shown here. And Americans of the different sec- 
tions became acquainted with one another. And a 

243 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

certain invention was shown which made the people, 
when they went back to their homes, in this or that 
near or distant quarter of the land, tell amazedly 
that the human voice could now be heard for miles 
over a wire. And Japan and her art were dis- 
covered at the Centennial; before that Japan had 
been rather vaguely thought of as a sort of Chinese 
island. 

The Centennial profoundly influenced the develop- 
ment of American art. It drew the North and the 
South closely together. Indeed it drew the entire 
nation into unity. It seemed as if every family in 
the land sent at least one representative. There 
were ten million admissions to the grounds. 

"When it was all over, most of the exposition build- 
ings were swept away, and the park resumed its 
parklike aspect. One building, however, was re- 
tained; an unattractive structure. Memorial Hall; 
and it contains considerable collections of curios and 
paintings, with examples of early American artisan- 
ship, notably in glass and silver and to some extent 
in pottery and furniture; a collection of silver 
spoons of America's early days being especially 
noteworthy. 

The Centennial may fairly be considered the first 
broad national and international exposition of the 
United States, such a matter as the earlier Crystal 
Palace of New York not in any degree rivaling it. 
And when the Centennial was held it far outdid any- 
thing that Europe had at that time presented. 

Philadelphia is a slow city. Her own people will 

244 



FEOM CITY HALL TO MEMOEIAL HALL 

either admit it or be proud of it, according to temper- 
ament. One is tempted at times to say that she not 
only will not follow the Bostonian admonition to hitch 
her wagon to a star but that she will be content with 
a hitching post. All of which would show a marked 
misconception of the city. For, slow as she is, she 
has been first in many things, from the proud begin- 
ning when she stood for religious freedom and for 
fairness toward the Indians. Possibly her claims 
are not justified in every detail, but it is a highly 
interesting list of claims that she makes; among 
them being the first medical school in the country, 
the first hospital, the first fire-insurance company, 
the first bank, the first water-works, the first monthly 
magazine, the first daily newspaper, the first re- 
ligious magazine, the first juvenile periodical; and, 
although humor is not her strong point, the first 
illustrated comic paper! 




245 



CHAPTEE XVI 



THE FAIR MANSIONS OF FAIEMOUNT 




desired. He wishes 



IFFEESON, writing from 
Paris, in 1787, sends to Mrs. 
Smitli in London, the daugh- 
ter of John Adams, some ar- 
ticles which she had wished 
him to procure. ''Mr. Jef- 
ferson has the honor to 
present his compliments to 
Mrs. Smith, and to send her 
the two pairs of corsets she 
they may he suitable, as 
Mrs. Smith omitted to send her measure." Pic- 
ture the predicament of the tall statesman, at the 
Paris counter, and the restrained amusement of the 
clerk! The letter continues pleasantly, and con- 
cludes: *'Mr. Jefferson begs leave to assure Mrs. 
Smith of his high esteem and respect, and that he 
shall always be happy to be rendered useful to her 
by being charged with her commands." 

Other times, other manners! And John Hancock, 
when in Philadelphia as President of the Continental 
Congress, put his tremendous signature at the bottom 
of a pleasant note to his charming fiancee, ** Dorothy 
Q.," who was then in the Connecticut town of Fair- 

246 



THE FAIR MANSIONS OF FAIEMOUNT 

field: ''How did my Aunt like her gown, and do let 
me know if the stockings suited her; she had better 
send a pattern shoe and stocking. I warrant I will 
suit her. — I have sent you by Doer Church in a 
paper box, directed to you, the following things for 
your acceptance, and which I do insist you wear. 2 
pair white silk stockings which I think will fit you, 
4 pair white thread, 1 pair black satin, 2 capps, 1 fan, 
1 very pretty light hat, 1 neat airy summer cloak.'* 
"With this last item he puts the parenthesized note 
''I asked Doer. Church," but as to the others he pre- 
sumably followed his own unassisted judgment. One 
is astonished at his bravery ! And he modestly adds : 
**I wish these may please you. I shall be gratified if 
they do. I will attend to all your commands." 
After all, shopping was no easy thing in those pre- 
department-store days, particularly with the Eevolu- 
tion's disturbance of trade, and a man was expected 
to do his part. It is worth noting, as showing what 
a pleasant love affair it was, and that even being 
presiding officer of a revolutionary assembly could 
not make the big-signatured John forget to be de- 
voted, that he closed his note with: ** Adieu, my Dr. 
Girl, and believe me to be, with great Esteem and 
Affection, Yours without Reserve, John Hancock." 

It would seem from the above letters of Hancock 
and Jefferson that one need not argue any special 
intimacy, although it shows very friendly relations, 
between Andre — ^promoted from Captain to Major, 
the charming society man, dancer, friend-maker, and 
go-between — and the wife of Benedict Arnold, that, 

247 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

before the negotiations with her husband to make 
him a traitor became known, Andre wrote to her in 
Philadelphia, from New York: *'It would make me 
very happy to become useful to you here. Should 
you not have received supplies I shall be glad to enter 
into the whole detail of cap-wire, needles, gauze, etc., 
and to the best of my ability render you in these trifles 
services from which I hope you will infer a zeal to be- 
further employed. You know the Mischianza made 
me a complete milliner." 

The home of Peggy Shippen, Peggy Arnold, Mrs. 
Benedict Arnold, still known as Mount Pleasant, one 
of the very finest of the numerous old-time mansions 
of America, is still preserved in the very scenical 
Fairmount Park (to use a word that Beaconsfield 
loved) : and it is by far the finest of the old houses of 
the park. 

In early days, rich folk delighted to come to this 
hilly river region, and the city, in an admirable spirit, 
has preserved the greater part of the fine houses 
that they built here. They are utilized mainly for 
restaurants or rest-houses ; the one known as "Wood- 
ford, among the finest, is the park-police station ; and 
even though some of the houses have been sadly 
altered to meet supposed modern needs or ideas 
others are still very much as the builders left them. 

The mansion of Woodford, built about 1740, is on 
the same side of the Schuylkill, the eastern, as is 
Mount Pleasant, which stands between what would be 
the line of Dauphin Street and that of Girard 
Avenue; Woodford being a little more to the north- 

248 



THE FAIR MANSIONS OF FAIRMOUNT 

ward, opposite the end of Dauphin Street. Wood- 
ford was for years the home of William Coleman, 
one of the close personal friends of Benjamin Frank- 
lin ; a member of his Junto ; a man of whom Franklin 
has written in the highest terms, for his clever head 
and irreproachable morals ; a man justifying Frank- 
lin's encomiums by the fine way in which, late in life, 
he filled important judgeships. 

This house, which was Judge Coleman's home, is 
a building of great attractiveness, of brick that has 
been dulled to variegated hues of softened reds and 
reddish yellows. Outwardly, there are quoined cor- 
ners, and brick pilasters; and inside one notes, in 
particular, the cove cornices in the parlors, and an 
exceedingly fine stair in a square-enclosed room: it 
being thus enclosed to prevent the downstairs heat 
from mounting upward on cold days. It stands as 
a house ought to stand for one so honored by Frank- 
lin and who, like Franklin, honorably rose from mod- 
est station. 

Shortly before the Revolution, David Franks, 
one of a Hebrew family that was prominent both 
socially and financially, took the house. But David 
Franks was of pro-British leanings; and it was one 
of the grim jests of those times that Benedict Arnold, 
of all men — his near neighbor and even at that time 
a traitor, although a hidden one — had him put under 
arrest on a charge of sedition. 

Scattered here and there in the great extent of 
parkland, some on one side of the Schuylkill and some 
on the other, are such old places as Lemon Hill, with 

249 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

fine lines, even thongli spoiled by an encompassing 
balcony, and quoin-cornered Belmont, also sadly 
metamorphosed, and the almost quaint Letitia house, 
or Penn house, which Penn may very possibly have 
built, which was taken to pieces, brick by brick, in its 
original location in the city, and carefully rebuilt 
here. 

Near the Penn house is Sweet Briar, a mansion 
built a century ago by Samuel Breck, who claimed as 
unique the distinction of having shaken the hand of 
President Washington, and also the hand of Presi- 
dent Lincoln, and both of them in Philadelphia. And 
there is the Grove house, on a little hill, the spot 
where the family settled in the early 1700 's; an old 
dormered mansion, the precise date of whose con- 
struction is unknown. And there is Solitude; not a 
mansion, this, but a little house of large memories, a 
house built by a grandson of William Penn, one John 
Penn, who came over at the close of the Eevolution 
to look into the affairs of the Penn family. He seems 
to have been in some ways a queer sort; and assur- 
edly, if he had not had some queer qualities, he could 
not have built this Solitude, for it is a house precisely 
twenty-six feet by twenty-six ! The parlor is twenty- 
six feet by seventeen, and behind it is a hall which is 
twenty-six feet in length and the missing nine feet in 
width. 

Penn's wealth and connections and family import- 
ance drew important guests here during his occu- 
pancy. This tiny house loomed large as a social 
center. And, in particular, there was a fete cham- 

250 



THE FAIR MANSIONS OF FAIRMOUNT 

petre given here, with tents and marquees all about, 
and as guests the people of the highest stand- 
ing. This freakish house of John Penn, this house 
that Jack built, although it has no connection with the 
cow with the crumpled horn, has close neighboring 
with various other crumpled horns, for by an odd fate 
it is within the enclosure set apart for the city's 
Zoo. 

Most of the houses built within the district that in 
course of time has become Fairmount Park were the 
country homes of wealthy folk who at the same time 
had their town-houses in the near-by city, the people 
of Philadelphia having early set the fashion of having 
both city and suburban living, following in this the 
example of William Penn himself, who not only had 
his home in Philadelphia but also built a veritable 
mansion, not on the Schuylkill indeed, but on an 
island in the Delaware, above Bristol; a mansion 
which has quite vanished away, but from which some 
pieces of William Penn's own furniture have been 
preserved. 

When one thinks of the homes of the Schuylkill 
region, the Fairmount Park region, the mind goes 
at once to Mount Pleasant, noblest and most beauti- 
ful of them all, and far the most important, even 
though the importance was mostly a somber import- 
ance, from the character and the fate of some who 
lived here. One never forgets that superb Mount 
Pleasant was the home of Benedict Arnold. 

It is interesting to note the estimation in which 
his wife is still held in this city. She was of one of the 

251 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

finest of Philadelphia families; she seems to have 
been bright and goodlooking ; she was a Shippen ; she 
was a social entity, of a family of important social 
entities ; so her name is still held m high estimation, 
A hotel has her name and her picture on its daily 
menu cards, in the expectation that this will win popu- 
larity; and the best-known woman newspaper writer 
of the city uses the name of '* Peggy Shippen," as a 
nom-de-plume, knowing that it will attract. Now, 
such things could only be in this city. All that Peggy 
Shippen did was to marry Benedict Arnold and to 
continue to be his wife, and to accept money, person- 
ally, from the British government, after her hus- 
band's treason became known; not extraordinarily 
good reasons for honored remembrance. 

The continued and widespread honoring of Mrs. 
Arnold makes it worth while to mention that when 
the general married her he was twice her age, a 
widower — ^his wife having died so recently as since 
the opening of the Eevolution — and that he had three 
children, the oldest being seventeen. He was living 
extravagantly at the time he married her, and was 
even then under charges which affected his integrity 
and on account of which, shortly after the marriage, 
he was officially censured. 

That the young wife not only overlooked her hus- 
band's traitorous schemes, but that she actively aided 
them, was the belief of many, among them being 
Aaron Burr, a contemporary, than whom a shrewder 
man never lived, and to whom was open many a 
source of information closed to people in general. 

252 



THE FAIR MANSIONS OF FAIRMOUNT 

Washington himself probably felt doubts of Peggy ^s 
loyalty, but when the crash came, at West Point, her 
position was so painful that he gave orders to let 
her, with her infant child, go back to Philadelphia, 
courteously refraining from criticism ; but the Coun- 
cil shortly ordered her into the British lines, on the 
expressed ground that her continued presence was a 
danger. 

Not only was Arnold given English money and the 
military rank that he craved, but, in time, four sons 
of this ** officer and gentleman," and his wife Peggy, 
were one by one, as they became old enough, taken 
into the British army: not as private soldiers, with 
muskets in their hands, to fight in an effort to blot 
out their father's disgrace, but as officers. One was 
made a lieutenant, another a captain, another a 
colonel, and the fourth a major-general. It is of still 
graver moment, so far as Benedict Arnold's wife, of 
the distinguished Philadelphia family, is concerned, 
that the British government paid to her personally, 
in addition to what it gave her husband and their 
sons, a pension of five hundred pounds a year. 

Arnold's courtship had been ardent, just as his 
soldiering had been ardent. As a soldier, he had 
carried out plans, such as conducting an army 
through pathless Maine in the depth of winter, in the 
face of incredible difficulties and dangers; and as a 
wooer, a three-child widower, a man under a cloud, 
a man of no ''family," the son of a bankrupt, he won 
a matrimonial prize. In his wooing he lost no time. 
He arrived in Philadelphia on June 20, 1778. Be- 

253 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

fore September 25, of that year, he was on the foot- 
ing of a lover who had been paying his addresses and 
not without success, for on that date he wrote a long 
and passionate letter, with such ardent sentences as : 

"Suffer me to hope for your approbation. Con- 
sider before you doom me to misery, which I have 
not deserved, but by loving you too extravagantly." 

Eeally, it seems as if John Hancock wrote de- 
votedly, but this sort of letter quite out-Hancocks the 
big-signatured John. Arnold continues: *' Consult 
your own happiness; and, if incompatible, forget 
there is so unhappy a wretch; for may I perish if I 
would give you one moment's inquietude to purchase 
the greatest possible felicity to myself!" But Miss 
Peggy Shippen ought to have realized that all this 
did not ring true, that it was too studied and turgid. 
Better far the simple devotion of Hancock to 
*' Dorothy Q.," after all. And, indeed, it has been 
charged that this letter, which so captivated Peggy 
Shippen, was but a carefully made-up form, and that 
Arnold had sent it to some one else whom he would 
fain have married, before inditing it to Miss Peggy. 
But, at any rate, he goes on : * * My most ardent wish 
is for your happiness, and my latest breath will be 
to implore the blessings of Heaven on the idol and 
only wish of my soul." And so for the second time 
Arnold became ''Benedict the married man," for 
they were married in March of 1779. And it was at 
least as early as the early part of that year, although 
the precise date is not known, that his traitorous 
negotiations began. 

254 



THE FAIR MANSIONS OF FAIRMOUNT 

How General Arnold retained rank and place as 
long as lie did is surprising, for it mnst have been 
known that he was living beyond his means and bor- 
rowing money right and left. But we may suppose 
that it seemed incredible that a man in whom great 
trust was placed, and who had shown himself per- 
sonally heroic, could really do anything very wrong. 

While his home was here at Mount Pleasant, and 
he was military governor of Philadelphia; for thus 
high had he been raised; he tried to borrow money 
from the Chevalier de Luzerne; but the Frenchman 
dryly replied that when the envoy of a foreign power 
gives or lends money it is ordinarily to corrupt the 
receiver ; and for him to loan to Arnold would there- 
fore degrade them both; and so he declined ''with 
pain." All of which Arnold seems no more to have 
understood than does the painter in ''The Doctor's 
Dilemma," who, when his brazen request for money 
is refused can only uncomprehendingly say, "Oh, if 
you feel that way about it ! " 

At Mount Pleasant, vividly full as it is of stirring 
recollections, one feels in an exceptional degree the 
very life and movement of history; almost startling 
are the impressions of the past in their intensity. 
The place seems still alive with sinister influences. 
It stands unchanged in an unchanged environment. 

At the time of its construction. Mount Pleasant 
gave only suggestion of pleasantness. A rich retired 
one-armed privateer, Captain John Macpherson, was 
the builder; a capable, cheerful, even comical man. 
He published the first of Philadelphia directories, 

255 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

giving the names in direct house-to-house sequence, 
by squares, setting down the names and occupations 
when they were told him, and, when they were not, 
putting down some brief description to insure di- 
rectorial immortality. *'I won't tell you," stood for 
many a number; for directories were at that time 
unknown, and people were suspicious about being 
questioned. For 93 S'outh Street he put do^vn 
** cross woman"; for a number of houses: '*Wliat 
you please!" 

But he had not only wealth, but considerable posi- 
tion, and he secured prominent guests at his table, 
such as John Adams, who wrote of Mount Pleasant 
that it was ''the most elegant seat in Pennsylvania." 

The great show place was for sale when Arnold 
came to high command here ; and the general, fond of 
show and deeming show as in itself a means of re- 
taining power, coveted and secured the place, in the 
same spirit in which some Eoman general would have 
seized upon some mighty mansion in an ancient town. 
Arnold could not literally seize this house, but the 
way in which he took possession, and the way in 
which he pretended to settle the great place upon his 
wife, had all the appearance of seizing. Arnold's 
belief was that nothing was too good for him. And 
as military governor he had extraordinary powers, 
not definitely circumscribed. 

Mount Pleasant stands in a finely wooded portion 
of the great park, one tree in particular, in front of 
the house, being of enormous size. The house is near 
the edge of a high bank which rises from the level 

256 



THE FAIE MANSIONS OF FAIEMOUNT 

of the Schuylkill, and there are fine views of the bend- 
ing stream. There are still remains of a terraced 
garden along the bank, giving evidence that not only 
the house but the grounds were liberally planned. 
The house is double-fronted, and the more important 
front is away from the river, as if on one side one 
is expected to look at the river and on the other side 
at the house. 

It is a noble mansion, a beautiful mansion, a dis- 
tinguished, debonair, delightful mansion. It is of 
stuccoed stone darkened to a tawny or almost yellow- 
ish buff, with quoins of brickwork strDdngly in con- 
trast to the fagade. 

It is a high building, set in a high place; the im- 
possible was attempted and made a splendid success, 
by adding height to this building in its perched loca- 
tion and at the same time thus adding to effect- 
iveness. The basement windows are well out of 
the ground, surrounded with frames of stone; the 
chimneys are of enormous size ; there is a prominent 
balustrade ; the broad stone steps have iron banisters 
that are covered thick with vines; the dormers are 
high in proportion to their width ; above the fine front 
door is a still finer window. The entire building so 
more than justifies itself! 

On either side of the house are flanking wings, each 
of two-stories and a dormered garret. Eather, they 
are dependencies, and not wings, for they are not con- 
nected with thei mansion itself, but stand closely 
subsidiary to it as a highly important feature of the 
general design. 

257 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

The inside of the house well carries out the im- 
pressiveness of the exterior. There is richness of 
cornicing. There is paneling of fine design. The 
carved and paneled over-mantels are of unusual 
beauty. There are pilasters and pedimented doors. 
Finest of all is an upstairs room, overlooking the 
river, with exquisite beauty of carving over the doors, 
over the twin cupboards, over the fireplace. This 
room must surely have been especially the room of 
Mrs. Arnold; but the entire house, rooms and halls 
and stairs, seems still filled with the gay society folk 
and the gayly uniformed soldiers of so long ago. 
And how soon it was all to vanish! Here in this 
house the essentials of Arnold's plot were agreed 
upon. Here Arnold urgently asked to be transferred 
to West Point. The tragedy of it all seems so very 
vivid, so very recent, here in this beautiful house 
where the general lived so haughtily, entertained so 
lavishly, plotted so infamously. 

Immediately preceding the acquiring by Benedict 
Arnold of Mount Pleasant it had been leased by an 
enormously wealthy Spaniard, Don Juan de Mirailles, 
who had been sent to America by the Spanish 
Government as its official representative. Mirailles 
planned living in state, in Philadelphia, and, being of 
vast wealth, he fixed upon and secured this magnifi- 
cent suburban seat ; but found that, to be near General 
Washington, he must give up Philadelphia and go to 
Morristown. 

At Morristown the career of Mirailles was 
tragically short. He was taken ill and in a few days 

258 



THE FAIR MANSIONS OF FAIRMOUNT 



was dead. And the funeral was such as would have 
given satisfaction to Arnold himself, lover of pomi^ 
as he was. 

A Spanish priest conducted the services. Wash- 
ington, with many officers and members of Congress, 
walked in a funeral procession that was a mile in 
length. Candles blazed in the sunlight, and there was 
the solemn intoning of chants. The body of the 
grandee lay uncovered, in the coffin, and was clad 
in a magnificent suit of scarlet, embroidered in gold 
lace, and there were also diamonds and jewels and 
rings. The grave was guarded by soldiers night and 
day, until the body could be taken up, with the intent 
of sending it to Spain. 




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CHAPTER XVII 



A COLLEGE TOWN WITHIN THE CITY 




IHE University of Penn- 
sylvania is unique in its 
location, among Ameri- 
can universities, for it is 
not only within the limits 
of one of the very largest 
cities, but it is actually 
within a mile and a half of 
the very heart of the city, 
City Hall Square. It has, 
too, great amplitude of 
grounds although so near 
the center of a great city, for its buildings and 
campus cover well over one hundred acres, in West 
Philadelphia. People like to refer to the university 
as being ' ' on the Schuylkill, ' ' but it is difficult to see 
why, for between its grounds and the river is a 
district of factories and railway tracks, which are not 
in evidence from the sweeping, peaceful university 
grounds, nor is even the Schuylkill itself in evidence 
except that it is crossed, on the way. 

It is a great college town within the city, for there 
are not only its own broad acreage and its many 

260 



A COLLEGE TOWN WITHIN THE CITY 

buildings, but, round about are clubhouses and 
fraternity bouses, and students' boarding houses, in 
profusion, and shops that cater to the students' 
needs. With its thousands of students scattered 
about among college buildings, and libraries, and dor- 
mitories, and museum, and campus, and also permeat- 
ing the entire surrounding neighborhood, it is a 
college town, complete in itself. And Philadelphia 
feels that her very identity is concerned in it, so much 
has it meant to the city, and so many of the city's 
best have for generations been educated there. 

It has been, in name, the University of Pennsyl- 
vania, since far back in 1791, before that beiug a col- 
lege and before that an academy. It was founded, 
as most of the old institutions of the city that have 
lived were founded, by Benjamin Franklin. 

His method was interesting. He felt such an in- 
terest in advanced and systematized education that 
he talked the matter with *'a number of active 
friends," as he expresses it, especially his friends 
of the Junto. Then he wrote and printed and 
distributed without charge to the "principal in- 
habitants" a pamphlet entitled, ** Proposals Eclat- 
ing to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania." 
This was in 1749. Next, as soon as he '* could sup- 
pose their minds a little prepared by the perusal of" 
the pamphlet he ' * set on foot a subscription for open- 
ing and supporting an academy"; and secured the 
sum, very large for those days and for a city of the 
size of Philadelphia at that time, of five thousand 
pounds. He presented the plan as that of ''some 

261 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

publick-spirited gentlemen, avoiding as much as I 
could, according to my usual rule, the presenting my- 
self to the publick as the author of any scheme for 
their benefit." 

The first buildings were what would now be deemed 
very far downtown, for they were at Fourth and 
Arch streets. Here, in a court behind old buildings 
which are not so old as those of the university, two 
tablets have been put up as a reminder that the uni- 
versity beginnings were there, in structures long 
since destroyed; but as a matter of fact here seems 
to be part of one building still standing, from as 
far back in the university's history as 1762, or per- 
haps earlier. It is reached by an unattractive and 
dilapidated little court, opening off North Fourth a 
little south of Arch; but it is itself only an unat- 
tractive and dilapidated fragment, after all, and is 
not, as it stands, either a dignified or picturesque 
fragment; nor is it altogether to be identified, with 
perfect satisfaction. 

The college, so soon to be a university, shifted its 
quarters here and there, even taking at one time tlie 
so-called Presidential Mansion which the city built 
where the post-office now stands; it was hoped that 
the national cajjital would be retained here, and so a 
great house was put up for the occupancy of the 
successive Presidents ; but in those days there was no 
provision for the household expenses of the Presi- 
dent, on the part of the Government, and as Presi- 
dent Washington thought he could not afford, per- 
sonally, to keep up such a large establishment as the 

262 



A COLLEGE TOWN WITHIN THE CITY 

great house would demand, he courteously declined 
its use, as did President Adams in his turn. 

The vital removal of the University was in the 
1870 's, and it was to the present location, in West 
Philadelphia. It has, therefore, no old-time struc- 
ture among its many buildings, to add the gentle 
luster of age for the eye to observe, to accompany the 
honored luster of age that comes from a long line of 
distinguished graduates. 

The period of its removal to West Philadelphia, 
its present location, was not a period of good 
architecture. It was the period of Queen Victoria, 
of President Grant, of President Hayes; and no 
matter how worthy, as rulers, were Victoria and 
Grant and Hayes, the periods of their rulership were 
marked by bad architecture. So the buildings of the 
University, still cluttering the campus, were of 
greenish stone, laid in painful, smooth-face regular- 
ity. The stone itself is unbeautiful, and unbeautiful 
is the architecture. But vines are beginning to 
beautify by hiding. 

And a new era has come. A large area has been 
covered, in recent years, with a number of buildings 
of extreme distinction and of beauty and charm to 
equal the distinction. These new buildings are of 
delightful Tudor style, with quadrangles and bal- 
ustraded terracing, with differences in ground levels 
which are suggestive of Haddon Hall, with mullioned 
windows, with felicitous passages, with oriel 
windows, with towers standing four-square, remind- 
ful, in their serene strength, of the towers of 

263 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

Cardinal Wolsey at Hampton Court. And these 
buildings, new as they are, are already acquiring the 
aspect of serene age 1 

It has been so customary for a famous Philadel- 
phian to be a University of Pennsylvania man, that 
it has almost been taken for granted. And many a 
distinguished man from other parts of the country 
has also graduated here. 

When Tench Tilghman is mentioned, in a Phila- 
delphia book, one expects to find it first set down that, 
Maryland-born though he was, he was a graduate of 
this university, with the class year named, and only 
after that to find the statement that he was a particu- 
larly trusted member of Washington's staff, with the 
title of colonel. And when, continuing, one finds 
that Tilghman was ordered to gallop to this city of 
Philadelphia with news to deliver to Thomas Mc- 
Kean, he almost expects to find it first mentioned 
that McKean was an A.M. of 1763 and afterwards 
president of the board of trustees of the university, 
before stating that he was President of Congress and 
that it was on this account that Tilghman went gal- 
loping to him, rousing him out of bed in the middle 
of the night with the news that Cornwallis was taken, 
and getting the bells all ringing and all the people 
pouring out into the streets in the darkness, weeping, 
laughing, almost frantic with joy that the long agony 
was over. 

A century after the death of Stephen Girard, the 
university is trending toward the opinions of Girard 
in an important point; for Girard, with his own in- 

264 



A COLLEGE TOWN WITHIN THE CITY 

stitution of learning, expressed strong disapproba- 
tion of the study of Latin and Greek, although he did 
not actually forbid it; and the University of Penn- 
sylvania has gone far, in recent years, towards the 
elimination of these studies, if not by official action, 
at least by a great falling off in the number of 
students of the classics. But, after all, it was a man 
still more distinguished than any of those of this 
university, who got along, according to rare old Ben 
Jonson, with ** small Latin and less Greek." 

Some mile or so to the southward is a curiously 
interesting spot, known as Bartram's Garden. The 
house and the garden belonged to John Bartram, 
who was born near Philadelphia in 1699, and settled 
himself in this garden when a young man. He won 
distinguished fame as a botanist, his name becoming 
known not only in this country but in Europe ; so far 
did his fame reach, that his name was called to the 
attention of King George the Third, who appointed 
him a Court Botanist, with the very practical and 
very thoughtful concomitant of an actual salary. 

The quaint and curious house of stone that 
Bartram built here, far back in 1731, is delightful 
in its general effect. It is of no particular style; 
it is a cozy, rambling, individual house, which only 
a man of quaint originality could have built. 

Bartram was satisfied with the way in which his 
life ran on, for it ran smoothly and happily, in a quiet 
current; and, devout Quaker that he was, he carved 
on a stone, and set it in over one of the windows, 
when he had lived in his house for forty years : 

265 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

" 'Tis God alone, Almighty Lord, 
The Holy One, by me adored." 

And this lettering is still there, with his name 
added, ''John Bartram, 1770." 

But more important than his house was his garden, 
of five or six acres, sloping down to the edge of the 
river, for within it he set out great numbers of rare 
and interesting plants and flowers, and shrubs and 
trees. Some of his planting still exists, but year by 
year the plants dwindle out of existence, though the 
city has taken charge of the estate, house and garden 
together, and called it Bartram Park. 

At this old house, Bartram received, as friends, 
the most distinguished men of his time, and Ben- 
jamin Franklin was one of them. 

It was in the big convention hall in West Philadel- 
phia that McKinley was nominated for his second 
term; a convention that was a maker of history, for 
if Eoosevelt had had his way he would not have been 
Vice-President on the ticket, and the entire history 
of our country might have been different. 

For Roosevelt knew that the vice-presidency had 
become a shelf upon which to lay presidential aspir- 
ants, and he was determined not to be shelved. And 
he repeated over and over his refusal to consider the 
vice-presidency, even from the depths of his bathtub, 
on the side of which he vigorously pounded, just 
a few hours before the nomination. 

And there were political leaders who had deter- 
mined to take advantage of this feeling on his part 
by putting his name in competition with that of 

266 



A COLLEGE TOA^^ WITHIN THE CITY 

McKinley for the nomination for the presidency it- 
self. I do not know whether or not Roosevelt was 
aware of this, or whether it was deemed safer to go 
ahead without his permission. It is not improbable 
that he deemed it better to wait four years. But some 
leaders opposed to McKinley were determined to 
force a conflict. So the night before the nomination, 
there came to Mark Hanna, who was managing the 
entire McKinley movement, the news that the name 
of Roosevelt was formally to be put in nomination 
the next day ; that the direct battle was to be precipi- 
tated. 

Hanna instantly began to work. That night was 
the hardest of his hard-working life. Message after 
message was sent; conference after conference was 
held; he ordered, directed, advised, cajoled, finessed, 
threatened, promised, used all the arts and weapons 
at the command of a successful political manager of 
men. And, inspired by his tremendous earnestness, 
his lieutenants worked with tremendous earnestness 
under his control. Hanna knew that McKinley 
would probably win, in a direct fight, but he also 
knew that there was a possibility that Roosevelt 
could win. And he knew that at least there would be 
bitterness and schism if a conflict should come. 

He did not sleep that night. He threw every 
particle of his immense virility into his struggle. 
And he won. Wlien the convention met he knew that 
it was to be McKinley, unopposed, and that Roose- 
velt had been induced to consent to the vice-presi- 
dency after all. Hanna watched, ready and re- 

267 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

sourceful for any possible slip, while the nomination 
of McKinley went through as smoothly as if no one 
had ever thought of precipitating a gigantic battle. 

Hanna watched it all with a grim happiness. I was 
beside him on the platform as the tumult and the 
shouting died and knew somewhat of the night's 
experience. It was a fiercely hot day, and the sun 
was beating through a skylight directly upon him. 
He stood there, silent, as if on the verge of a fever- 
chill ; he was cold and gray, holding himself together 
by a mighty effort, and a more utterly wearied man 
I never saw. But he had won. 

In West Philadelphia is Woodlands Cemetery, one 
of the large cemeteries of the city, presenting an- 
other example of how Philadelphia preserves noble 
examples of architecture of the past. A Philadel- 
phian of wealth, William Hamilton, who loved to 
drive in a carriage with four horses, at a time when 
carriages were few, and who also loved the aristo- 
cratic display of postilions, built a fine mansion, be- 
fore the Revolution, and called it Woodlands. The 
house and the fine estate around it were secured by 
the city some three quarters of a century ago, the 
estate to be maintained as a city cemetery, and the 
house itself to be preserved. And it stands there, 
a splendid example of the fine and impressive 
in Colonial architecture, with large pillar-fronted 
portico, and general effectiveness. 

The quaint and whimsical author, Frank R. Stock- 
ton, who was a native of Philadelphia, lies buried 
in Woodlands Cemetery. He who wrote so humor- 

268 



A COLLEGE TOWN WITHIN THE CITY 

ously of water adventure, in *'Eudder Grange" and 
"Mrs. Leeks and Mrs. Aleshine," is buried here, 
near the Schuylkill, but it is no longer an attractive 
river in this vicinity, but dismally ruined by ap- 
pearance of factories and smoke; and his funeral 
was on a dismal day of early spring, not at all fitting 
for a man who had given the world so much of honest 
cheerfulness; but distinguished men had gathered, 
from this city and from New York, to walk as pall- 
bearers beside his body and thus do him the last pos- 
sible honor. 

In Woodlands is also buried the gallant seaman. 
Admiral Porter; adding another to the astonishing 
list of notable men of the navy who are buried in 
one or another of the cemeteries of the city. 

As worthy of note as any of the brilliant admirals 
and commodores, is plain Joshua Humphreys, a 
Philadelphian, whose ancestry ran far back to the 
earliest days of the city, and whose descendants are 
still Philadelphians. As a young man, he assisted 
in making ships of war for our Eevolutionary 
fighters. But it was in the early 1790 's that he came 
into prominence. There was much talk of a needed 
navy at that time, and Humphreys attracted the at- 
tention of General Knox, Secretary of War, whose 
department in those days included the navy, as the 
place of Secretary of the Navy had not been created. 
Through Knox, the ideas of Humphreys were put be- 
fore Washington, who also was deeply impressed. 
Then the matter was laid before Congress. 

The result was, that Congress authorized the 

269 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

building of six battleships, and this Philadelphian, 
Joshua Humphreys, was directed, in 1794, to prepare 
plans for all of them, in accordance with the ideas 
that he had outlined and expressed in his proposals 
to Knox. 

The ships were to be built, from his plans, at 
various ports: the Chesapeake at Norfolk, the 
Constellation at Baltimore, the President at 
New York, the Constitution at Boston, the Con- 
gress at Portsmouth, and the United States at 
Philadelphia; this last to follow not only his plans, 
but to be constructed under his personal direction; 
and it is a pleasure to know that Washington, pro- 
foundly interested, frequently visited his Southwark 
shipyard, on the Delaware, at the edge of the city, 
and watched the development of the battleship. 

A letter from George Washington Parke Custis, 
written in 1844, to a grandson of Joshua Humphreys, 
says, of the first of these visits, "I well remember 
visiting with Washington the United States frigate 
at Southwark when her keel was laid, and stern and 
stern-post only up. The Chief expressed his admir- 
ation at the great size of the vessel that was to be;" 
and the letter goes on with details, concluding with: 
** Washington expressed himself, on his return in his 
coach, much gratified with all he had seen and heard 
in this, his First Visit to an American Navy Yard." 

For his ships, Humphreys loved live-oak and red 
cedar. He was a master of lines, for speed and 
maneuvering, lines that were sharp and clear and 
clean, so that his ships cut the water like a knife. 

270 



A COLLEGE TOWN WITHIN THE CITY 

And never was there another man who had so mnch 
to do with so many famous ships. The Constit'w- 
tion won enduring fame as Old Ironsides. The 
President fired the first shot in our second war 
with England. The Congress, after a brilliant 
record in the War of 1812, remained in, existence 
until destroyed by the Merrimac in 1862. The 
Chesapeake should never be forgotten, as the ship 
of the gallant Lawrence. The United States was 
sailed by the famous Barry, whose statue is 
prominent beside the old State House, and Barry 
wrote to Humphreys in regard to her that "no ship 
ever answered her helm better, and in all probability 
she will surpass anything afloat," and he said that 
Decatur (one of the many who are buried in Phila- 
delphia!) was of the opinion that she would equal, 
in sailing, ** anything that floats." 

A letter written by Knox refers to Humphreys as 
** Constructor of the Navy of the United States," 
but he informally won the more delightful title of 
'* Father of the American Navy." 




CHAPTER XVIII 



SOME DISTINGUISHING TEAITS 




HEN Doctor 
Benjamin Rush 
after the bril- 
liant capture of 
Stony Point, 
wrote to Gen- 
eral Wayne, 
from Philadel- 
phia, that * * Our 
streets rang 
for many days 
with nothing 
but your name. You are remembered constantly next 
to our good and great Washington, over our claret and 
madeira'^; he expressed one of the marked traits of 
his city. For it is a city of the palate, a city that loves 
good things to eat and drink, a city of gustatory amen- 
ities, of old friends sitting about old mahogany, drink- 
ing old wine : and when the World War made it seem 
almost unpatriotic to eat or to drink it was a blow at 
the city's heart: not because — the. distinction strikes 
at the very root of the matter — ^not because of undue 
love for eating or drinl^ing, but because eating and 
drinking have from the beginning represented 

272 



SOME DISTINGUISHING TRAITS 

friendship and hospitality. For Philadelphia is a 
hospitable city: even though it loves to pronounce 
the word with accent on the second syllable. A 
phrase used somewhere by the lovable Charles Lamb 
to typify hospitality might well fit the typical resi- 
dents, for ** their kitchen chimney is never suffered 
to freeze." 

But at the same time the Philadelphian loves din- 
ing for its own sake. To his mind, nature gave a 
discriminating palate with the intent that it should 
be given the chance to discriminate. To him din- 
ing is the friendly consideration of exquisite flavors. 

Yet some of the most distinctive dishes have 
names that do not in themselves attract. Although 
I should be surprised to know of any born Phila- 
delphian who did not like their most distinctive 
breakfast dish, scrapple, I should be equally sur- 
prised to know of any one liking it who was not 
Pennsylvania-born. And this, because of the inhibi- 
tion of the name, the thoughts it arouses. And 
Philadelphians themselves like to tell of the visiting 
Englishman, who spent much time in this city, visit- 
ing and dining, and, after getting home again, on 
the other side of the ocean, told his friends of the 
city of Philadelphia, where everybody of family 
bears the name of ' ' Scrapple, ' ' and where everybody 
in the city eats "biddle" for breakfast. 

I doubt if the suggestion of ''catfish and waffles'' 
would appeal to many outsiders ; but for the native- 
born it is a dish delectable. But it really ought to 
be termed "kitten-fish" and waffles instead of '*cat- 

273 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

fish,'^ for to the average person, away from this 
city, a catfish is a big fish, fouT feet or so long, with 
big whiskers, and always with a suggestion of some- 
thing unpleasant, as if of the unpleasant water in 
which he is supposed to be captured, whereas the 
Philadelphia catfish, that they eat with waffles, is a 
small and delicate fish, and although it has whiskers 
they are not of the large and annoying variety. 

''Tripe and oysters, with sherry" sounds like an 
unpromising combination, but it is said to be 
delicious if prepared as it used to be prepared in 
long-past days, when the hostess herself often made 
it with her own hands, from some old-time recipe. 
Creamed oysters make one of the popular dishes at 
parties, but the oysters do not appear to be creamed, 
they being in color a distinct brown, instead; but 
here, every one seems to think they are normal. 
After all, these things depend on one's upbringing; 
and the attitude of the citizen of this city toward 
''creamed" oysters which are browned is similar to 
that of a Cincinnati man, who was stajdng at the 
best hotel here, toward water. Asking for water, 
the waiter indicated the glass, full of it. But the 
man from the Ohio looked at it critically; then, 
"Water! That ain't water I Water's yaller!" 
So here, cream is brown. 

But one kind of cream, ice cream, is superfine in 
Philadelphia as to smoothness and quality. And 
"Philadelphia poultry" is the name by which the 
best quality is called in New York. And "Delaware 
shad" have won wide renoA^Ti. The piece de re- 

274 



SOME DISTINGUISHING TRAITS 

sistance at a reception at any one of ten thousand 
homes of the well-to-do is still, as for many years 
past, a delicious chicken salad. There are succu- 
lences innumerable. Delicious are the little cakes at 
a real Philadelphia party, round little cakes like 
pound cake, glazed in white, and formally a certain 
make had, on top, a little tombstone lamb in relief. 
They are not novelties; they are old daily realities. 

To go into details regarding the cooking of Phila- 
delphia would be but to emulate the tales of that 
mighty diner, John Adams, who left on record his 
descriptions of house after house where gustatory 
triumph was achieved. The city has but sustained 
the fine traditions of the past, when its dining hospi- 
tality was such that not only Adams, but many an 
English, French, New York or New England visitor 
expressed surprise and pleasure at the meats and 
sweets, the fruits, the wines, the quality and the 
abundance of it all. And Quakers joined in the com- 
petition of hospitality, for there was no religious 
ban, even with their plain simplicity, on the legiti- 
mate pleasures of the table. 

Take a delightful old-time '* Philadelphia Cookery 
Book," if you would know somewhat of the city's 
cooking from the standpoint of those of past days, 
who produced it, instead of only from those who ate 
it. Note with what painstaking care, with what 
knowledge of materials and proportions, with what 
generosity as to quantities the recipes are set down. 
Turn the pages at random, read anywhere: 

*' Prepare a tablespoonful of beaten cinnamon, a 

275 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

teaspoonful of mace, and two beaten nutmegs, and 
mix them all together when powdered. Mix in a 
tumbler, half a glass of white wine, half a glass of 
brandy, and half a glass of rose water. Powder a 
pound of loaf sugar and sift it into a deep pan. Cut 
up in it a pound of fresh butter." And so it goes 
on. 

*'Mix together a gill of rich milk, a large wineglass 
of rose-water and four ounces of white sugar. Add 
to it the beaten yolk of two eggs." And so on. 

**Take ten eggs — " begins another. Ten eggs I 
No food shortage in those days! Under ''To boil 
a turkey," it begins ''Take twenty-j&ve large fine 
oysters" and it goes on to tell all about it, to the 
chestnut stuffing and chestnut sauce — which, by the 
way, is made by "peeling boiled chestnuts and 
putting them whole into melted butter." To broil 
beefsteaks, one finds it is needful to have the steak 
three-quarters of an inch thick and to have ready 
on your hearth a fine bed of clear bright coals, en- 
tirely free from smoke and ashes. 

Many Philadelphia dishes are distinctive, not that 
they are made only here, but that here they are 
characteristically cooked; as, crab-meat, or terrapin, 
or mushrooms; they make a wonderful mushroom 
soup, something I do not remember encountering else- 
where. 

A specialty of Philadelphia's cuisine, like the 
specialite de Tours, or the panne-forte of Sienna, is 
cinnamon bun. Made at a good confectioner's, it is 
not a commonplace affair, but is a light yeast-raised 

276 



SOME DISTINGUISHING TRAITS 

cake, a series of convolutions with currants and 
things, all mysteriously glazed with a sticky ooze of 
shining sugar and cinnamon. In the glazing is the 
trick of the making, for as with the glazed custards 
of France, the secret lies in the glazing of the pan, 
putting in the bun, baking it and turning it upside 
down. It is a luncheon joy for women and children 
rather than a man's favorite. 

Then there is another bun, said to have been 
Dolly Madison's favorite when she was in Philadel- 
phia and made for her during all her life: it is 
Spanish bun, a costly, delicate cake, with currants 
in it and, judging by its taste, mace and madeira; 
a kind of bun that undoubtedly came from the 
presence of the Spanish ambassadors and their 
suites; the cinnamon bun and the scrapple coming 
from the *' Pennsylvania Dutch," the tripe and 
oysters from the English, and the planking of the 
Delaware shad from the Indians. 

More than any other American city, Philadelphia 
possesses public markets that are great in capacity 
and considerable in number and convenient in general 
access. The Eeading Terminal Market is in the very 
heart of the city, and the other markets are likewise 
convenient for one portion or another of the com- 
munity. For two centuries the city has been justly 
famous for its public markets, and its few old broad 
streets, so very few in comparison with the narrow 
ones, were laid out, with the exception of Broad 
Street itself, for the sake of markets, which in old 
days were placed in their center; and a few of the 

277 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

old-time markets of that nature still remain, such 
as the one at Pine and Second streets, with its cen- 
tral building of quaintly interesting design. Even 
High Street had such a market, and it was taken 
away just before George Washington established his 
home on that street as President; and, when the 
market was taken away, the city changed the name of 
the street itself to Market ! 

Philadelphia has much that is fine besides food. 
The fine pictures in the homes of the present day, 
whether old houses or new, are prized inheritances 
from a prideful past or additions of the present day 
made in simulation of the past. The broad scale of 
living, the spacious rooms, the prints, the paintings 
by artists of the past or by our best Americans of 
to-day, the precious silver and china, all have united 
to give the fine homes of the city the quiet distinc- 
tion that they have from the first preserved. And 
there is very much more of antique treasure, of 
furniture and silver and china, preserved in the 
homes of Philadelphia than in any other city of 
America, in spite of generations of generous giving 
to historical collections that are already so full that 
many a precious piece goes to museum garret or 
cellar. 

Based upon acknowledged position that was un- 
questioned in early days and which still gives indi- 
cations of being essentially unquestioned, two 
churcbly sects divided and still continue to divide, 
between them, the social leadership; I should say 
that it is held with arrogance, so assured is the 

278 



SOME DISTINGUISHING TRAITS 

certitude of it, were it not that tlie two sects, the 
Episcopalians and Quakers, are simplicity itself in 
regard to it. And that is typical of the city: every- 
thing is just matter-of-course. 

The women of this city dress exceedingly well and 
look exceedingly well. I remember an exceedingly 
handsome young woman saying, one day, with a sort 
of jesting wistfulness, **I am so much a Philadel- 
phian that I wish, when I walk on Chestnut Street, 
that I were goodlooking enough for a man to stub his 
toe looking at me!" — as, I have no doubt, many a 
man did. And the women can do more than look 
attractive, for those of the better class have carried 
down and carried on excellent traditions. When 
John Adams wrote amazedly of the richness and 
abundance of food, his excellent Abigail wrote of the 
intellectual food, or at least of brilliancy and charm ; 
and she expressed it by saying that the Philadelphia 
women could entertain a large company, of both 
sexes, by conversation alone, "without the aid of 
cards." 

As an inheritance of custom from old days, the 
servants, whether black or white, are usually, on the 
average, well treated, and this results in making 
them, as a class, more than usually content and 
efficient. The quiet serenity of the general home 
atmosphere is also largely to be taken into account 
in explaining excellent servants. 

So unusual has it always been to treat servants 
wrongfully, that a delightful ghost story, one of the 
few ghost stories of the city, is that the devil at mid- 
279 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

night used to drive about the city, in a black carriage, 
keeping beside him on the seat the ghost of a rich 
citizen, the ghost being condemned forever to under- 
go such nightly punishment because of some injury 
he had done a servant. I think that the coming in 
of the motor-car has made it impossible to keej) the 
story alive ; though it is not altogether apparent why 
this should be so, as motor cars have already had 
a great deal more to do with making ghosts than ever 
was the case with carriages. The name of the rich 
man who made such a remarkably unpleasant series 
of rides has not come down, though it should not 
have been difficult to preserve it, as there were only 
half a dozen carriages in the Colony in the pre- 
Eevolutionary time when the story arose. 

Of a new-rich family of the present day it is told 
with relish, that one of its automobiles is devoted to 
the sole purpose of carrying quitting or discharged 
servants from the great suburban home to the rail- 
way station and bearing new ones to the house ; ser- 
vants who can scarcely be spoken of as family "re- 
tainers," one would think. And concerning another 
be-castled household, there is a little tittle-tattle of 
gossip that they buy three kinds of meat, one for the 
master and mistress, the second for the dogs, and the 
third for the servants. If these tales are not true 
they may pass as among the ''many inventions," to 
use a Biblical phrase, that are currently believed; 
and if they are true, they only mark by contrast the 
high average treatment of servants and employees in 
general which is part of the sense of civic pride. 

280 



SOME DISTINGUISHING TRAITS 

Servants are an important feature of life, for this 
is really a city of homes. There are nearly four 
hundred thousand dwelling houses, besides those of 
the suburbs. Here and there an apartment house 
rises high and prominent, but the population of such 
buildings is still tiny compared with that of the city 's 
one-family homes. And the comparatively few tall 
buildings of any sort, whether for homes or business, 
explains the absence of the Chicago note, the New 
York note, the *' absence of the note of the perpetual 
perpendicular" as Henry James expressed it. 

In spite of the city's quiet Quakerism, in spite of 
its having so learned the secret of serenity, there 
have been times when it was far from serene. As if 
to show that in the heart of every city, as in the heart 
of every man, even of quiet cities and quiet men, there 
lurk sanguinary forces waiting only to be roused, this 
city has now and then developed ferocious mobs. 
Mobs long ago murdered negroes and burned build- 
ings to express disapprobation of the Abolitionists. 
Mobs have flared into terrible activity to express 
hatred of Jews. Deadly mobs have arisen in deadly 
efforts to show that arson and murder were to be 
taken as convincing arguments against Catholicism. 

Pliiladelphia is notably a city of politeness: a 
Northern city at the edge of the South, it has in this 
respect assimilated the best of each region, and there 
is a quiet permeative courtesy, with nothing of the 
false or the overdone or the subservient. It would 
be impossible for a Philadelphia gentleman to stand 
to talk with a lady, without keepmg his hat off. 

281 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 



<( 



Sir" is common in general speech. An ordinary 
driver, for example, will say, "It's over there, sir," 
precisely as a well-bred man would say it. A man 
at a railway desk will say, *'It's the next desk, 
please"; and thus it goes : politeness and polite forms 
as a simple matter of course. 

I was about to write, that the typical people are 
people of culture, but I think the city can more justly 
be referred to as a city of savoir-faire, one is so often 
struck with the thought that the good things of the 
earth are not new to Philadelphia, but long familiar : 
a silver spoon has long been very close to the Phila- 
delphia mouth. 

It is a pleasant feature, and quite characteristic, 
that men who are actively busy with professions or 
business are glad to give freely of their time to mem- 
bership or trustee work with libraries or museums 
or charities : and as nearly everything in this city, of 
these kinds, is heavily endowed, there is not much 
demand to give more than time. 

The consideration given to the old is a pretty thing 
to see. For it is not given as deference to helpless 
age. It is given by the younger to the older gener- 
ations as a recognition that the older folk are dis- 
tinctly worth while. They are treated as elder com- 
rades, experienced and initiated, who are expected 
to enjoy and take part in social doings and whose 
conversation is both wise and entertaining. In con- 
sequence, nowhere else do people grow old so grace- 
fully. There is no attempt at looking or acting 
young. There is cheerful acceptance of age, with the 

282 



SOME DISTINGUISHING TRAITS 

recognition of the fact that age makes people more 
worth while. 

The generally permeative color of the buildings 
of the older portions of Philadelphia is burnt orange, 
of various shades of light and dark; there is some- 
times almost a pink; and one comes to love the dulled 
old hues of the old brick combined with the dulled 
old white of woodwork and the gleams and shadows 
from glazed headers of purplish-green. 

The houses that are still the homes of the well-to-do 
still have their steps of white marble regularly 
scrubbed, and still present to the eye marble lintels 
and copings, and white shutters on the first floor and 
green shutters on the second. And there are garden 
walls of stone or brick, in the very heart of the old 
city, with perhaps an arching gateway through which 
one looks into the ordered charm of a garden proud 
in the possession of ancient box and noble rhododen- 
drons. 

The narrow sidewalks of brick, set in sand, sloping 
markedly toward the gutters ; a little squirmy under- 
foot after a heavy rain and hollow-tapping and 
ghostly under the heels of late and lonely pedestrians ; 
are characteristic of the city's streets. 

With its old houses, Philadelphia retains old 
customs. Its ton is still 2240 pounds ; a point whose 
practical value is not to be overlooked in time of fuel 
shortage ! 

Men in evening clothes will walk, without over- 
coats, if the distance is not far. Women in evening 
clothes may sometimes similarly be seen walking 

283 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

to a friend's house (so many old friends live so close 
together!) or to the Academy. Among themselves 
it is still the little town of their ancestors, so they 
go about among themselves quite informally. 

They still use the odd phrasing, to describe a man's 
business, ''He's in coal," or "He's in leather," or 
"He's in sugar," or "He's in wood," or even "He's 
in meat." And distinctions are arbitrarily and per- 
haps subconsciously made, as, that to be "in leather" 
seems to be better form than to be "in coal." 

Of a man of many millions who was "in meat" it 
is told that an embittered and unsuccessful acquaint- 
ance of his early days, after fortifying himself with 
drink, went and taunted him with his past; "I knew 
you when you stood behind the meat counter!" he 
said, and then stood frightened at his own temerity. 
And in an instant came the swift response, bullet-like 
from the bullet-headed man: "Yes — but I didn't 
stay there ! ' ' 

Philadelphia has a look of settled wealth, of ac- 
customed, habitual wealth. Some of the cities of 
Holland have this same look. There are brick-built 
level-lying streets in Amsterdam that have the very 
look of prosperous quiet that is here in Philadelphia. 
No other American city is precisely like it in this re- 
gard, and as to foreign cities one thinks most readily 
of the ordered living of Holland. It is a thoroughly 
confirmed and settled and content society. 

In some degree, the insistence on having its own 
way is dogged; as in the determined holding to 
Jamestown as a summer resort instead of New 

284 



SOME DISTINGUISHING TRAITS 

York's Newport across a narrow watery strip. But 
if Philadelphia were not prepared to be dogged in 
adherence to traditional ways she would lose her 
traditions. 

And even her humor is traditional. The old club 
members still tell to each other the old, old stories, as 
old-fashioned Scotchmen still tell tales from Dean 
Ramsay, calmly certain of their audience though they 
know that all of the audience know the stories word 
for word. Still the Philadelphian tells of the 
minister of this city, of a century or more ago, who, 
a wit to the end, murmured his final sally when 
struggling for breath on his death bed, *'I cannot die 
for the life of me." And still it is told how the 
slender man, when overlaid with mustard plasters, 
entreatingly whispered the suggestion that there was 
really ^'too much mustard for the quantity of meat.'* 

Among the most interesting manifestations of 
loyalty to custom is that which is represented by the 
''musical bread line," for it represents profound and 
unpretentious love of music. More than anything 
else, more even the honored Opera when it comes 
from New York, the city loves its orchestra: ''our 
orchestra," as it is always affectionately referred to. 
The city loves it, not with any particular overplacing 
of its merits, but as one loves, say, one's own child, 
loving it and thinking everything of it, and taking it 
for granted that it is everything that it ought to be. 

Winter after winter, the Philadelphia orchestra 
has given its series of concerts in the admirable old 
Academy of Music. Many a Philadelphian would 

285 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

feel as if he had ceased to be a Philadelphia!! if he, 
or even raore importai!tly she, did !iot have an annual 
seat. At the Friday afternoons in particular, when 
women foriQ the !najority of the audience, each one 
goes to her own seat so naturally, for concert after 
concert, for season after season, that the ushers have 
little to do. 

But a fine feature is that the seats in one large 
section are never reserved, but are sold for an admis- 
sion of twenty-five cents on the day of the concert: 
and this is what makes that "musical bread line" so 
frequently in queue during the winter. 

Because it is *'our orchestra" that the people go 
to hear, it is a cheerful social function; and in the 
lobby and even more charmingly from seat to seat, 
women nod brightly to one another, and pretty girls 
nod prettily to each other, and if a friend is missing 
from her seat it is matter of coi!cern, for absence 
means something portentous among these lifeloiig 
concert attendants. I know of a case in which even 
the birth of a child scarcely sufficed to keep the young 
mother away! 

At these concerts, austerity of music or of audience 
is altogether absent, as is also the music student 
determinedly following the score, Boston-like, in a 
great black book. The music is given musically, as 
its composers intended it to be given ; musically and 
with distinguished skill; and cheerful enjoyment is 
expected. 

And this attitude toward music, and the delightful 
way in which the audience gather from center and 

286 



SOME DISTINGUISHING TEAITS 



suburb for it, and the friendly spirit which makes 
these concerts such friendly gatherings of intelligent 
friends, is one among many of the ties which hold 
Philadelphians to their home town, and make such 
few Philadelphians as do go away feel glad to be back. 
Even after seeing happy Philadelphians in their 
best loved haunts, or on such en masse occasions as 
the coming out after the orchestra, or on the south 
side of Chestnut Street on a sunny winter afternoon, 
one sees that the old story of what one of the Friends 
said to his most valued non-Quaker acquaintance is 
more than a story ; that it is the reading of the riddle 
of the Philadelphia face, with its sense of sweet and 
pleasant infallibility in a world where all else is at 
least a little fallible; and the Quaker merely said, 
*'A11 the world's queer, but thee and me; — and thee's 
a little queer." 




287 



CHAPTER XIX 



THE BATTLE STREET OF A VILLAGE 




ERMANTOWN'S long 
main street was the 
scene of the battle 
which bears the name 
of the town, and 
quite a number of the 
old stone houses that 
look out upon the traffic 
and life of to-day, 
looked out upon the 
struggle and the death of that battle day of the long 
ago. In spite of the many new buildings that have 
been put up, as the place has grown, the ancient 
houses at once attract the eye and vividly arouse the 
memories of the past. 

Germantown Avenue, as it is now called, German- 
town Lane as it used to be, leads out, a narrow road 
with crooks and bends, from old Philadelphia beside 
the Delaware, to Germantown, which was long a 
separate village but now is part of Philadelphia ; and 
for most of the miles of distance that the road 
traverses on its way to Germantown, it passes 
through the uninteresting. 
But one should note, several miles out on its way, 

288 



THE BATTLE STEEET OF A VILLAGE 

the spot where it is intersected by Rising Sun Ave- 
nue, for the name of Risiag Sun, curious to find ia a 
city, antedates the coming of William Penn. 

Two years before Penn landed, two young 
Palatines had settled beside the Delaware, at where 
now is the foot of Arch Street. They were Henry 
Frey, a carpenter, and Joseph Plattenbach, a black- 
smith, and beside the river they built a combined 
carpenter and blacksmith shop, and they made a 
specialty of making and repairing tools for the 
settlers who even in those early days had come 
stragglingly along the river. 

One day, a superb young Indian stopped at their 
door and silently watched them work. They asked 
him in, they showed him the use of tools; day after 
day he remained and day by day he learned from 
them. With a few words in common, and the uni- 
versal language of signs, their friendship increased. 

When, one day, he asked them to accompany him 
to his father 's encampment, they went with him ; and 
the camp was where Rising Sun Avenue now crosses 
Germantowa Avenue; and they found his father to 
be the mighty chief, Tamenund, Tammany! For 
Tammany, the Patron Saint (or Sinner!) of New 
York, was a Pennsylvania Indian, with his head- 
quarters near the present Doylestown. The name of 
Chief Tammany's son was Minsi Usquerat, meaning 
Gentle Wolf, so says the old German account ; but the 
young men probably found that too difficult, for they 
called him Joseph i 

After feasting and smoking with the great chief 

289 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

and his warriors, the young men gave Tammany one 
of their two precious flint-lock smoothbores, and went 
to sleep on heaped-up beds of bearskins in the central 
wigwam. In the first dim light of morning, before 
the sun-rising, Tammany awoke them, and led them 
to a little hillock, and, with his warriors gathered 
approvingly around, he pointed out broad boundaries 
of trees and brook, and formally made them a 
present of the many acred domain! And as they 
looked in admiration, at the extent of the gift, the 
sun rose gloriously, and they named their land the 
**Aufgehende Sonne," the ''Eising Sun." 

They sent letters home, telling of their success and 
good fortune, and just after the coming of Penn 
their parents sailed and joined them, bringing with 
them the sister of Frey and the sister of Plattenbach. 
In the face of the increasing number of whites, 
Quakers and Germans and Swedes, the Indians mean- 
while had ceased their visits, vanishing farther back 
into the inland country. 

It was natural that Plattenbach should fall in love 
with the sister of Frey, and Frey with the sister of 
Plattenbach ; and one day, when a German preacher 
chanced to come up the river, and stopped where he 
saw the little shop, they piloted him to Eising Sun, 
and in a few days there was a double wedding there : 
and as the ceremony was concluded, it was noticed 
that many Indians, in full ceremonial costume, had 
gathered about the house, and the young men recog- 
nized their friend Joseph, the son of Tammany, now 
himself a powerful chief, who had come with his war- 

290 



THE BATTLE STREET OF A VILLAGE 

riors when the news of the intended marriages 
reached him. 

The long-while separate village of Germantown 
merges crowdedly and imperceptibly into the city of 
which it is now a part, but its beginning may be said 
to be at Stenton, a mansion put up about 1728 by 
James Logan, a scholar, a philosopher, a man of af- 
fairs, the secretary of William Penn, and afterwards 
personal representative of Penn himself and the 
Penn family, and Chief Justice of the Colony. A 
very important man indeed was Logan, and liked and 
trusted by all who knew him. He was one of Frank- 
lin's friends, and was the author of a book which was 
highly considered in its day: **Experimenta et 
Meletemata de Plantarum Generatione," which was 
published — delightful touch! — at ancient Ley den, in 
1739. 

The mansion; and it is really a mansion; is main- 
tained in the center of a tiny park. It is a little away 
from the line of Germantown Avenue, near the rail- 
way station of "Wayne Junction, and is full of interest, 
from the first sight of its square-fronted hip-roofed 
and dormered exterior, of dulled brick with black 
headers, to the front steps of curving stone, through 
its door of simple dignity, into its brick-paved en- 
trance hall (a feature of unusual interest) and 
throughout its charming interior. This house was 
among the most excellent houses, in an era of the 
excellent. Its hall, wainscoted in white, its splendid 
staircase, its beautiful wall-cupboard: — ^it is rich in 
points of interest. 

291 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

A great cMef came eastward from the Ohio 
country, "Wingohocking, and he visited, here, the pow- 
erful Logan, Secretary of the Colony and known to 
be a friend of the Indians; and Logan and he, in 
Indian fashion, exchanged names, that of Logan 
being given to the stripling son of Wingohocking, 
and the name of Wingohocking being given to a little 
stream, near Stenton, with the idea that, as Logan 
expressed it, "Long after we have passed away it 
shall still flow, and bear thy name.'* The name is 
still known, in Germantown, as that of the little 
stream, and that of a railway station; and as to the 
stripling, henceforth known as Logan, he rose to 
great fame in the region of the Ohio, as both states- 
man and warrior, and a speech which he delivered at 
a council has been rated, by no less an authority than 
Thomas Jefferson, as among the great speeches of the 
world : 

*'I appeal to any white man to say, if ever he 
entered Logan's cabin hungry and he gave him no 
meat," Logan begins; then, after telling of the kill- 
ing, in cold blood, of his entire family, he goes on: 
*'This called on me for revenge. I have sought it. 
I have killed many. I have fully glutted my venge- 
ance;" and from this he continues, briefly, to the 
unforgettable end: **Who is there to mourn for 
Logan? Not one!" All of which makes a most 
curious connection with Stenton. 

General Howe had his headquarters here during 
the Germantown battle. Afterwards, under a gen- 
eral order from him to burn buildings owned by 

292 



THE BATTLE STREET OF A VILLAGE 

''obnoxious persons," two dragoons rode up with 
definite instructions to destroy Stenton, and at once 
went to the barn for straw. At that moment, up rode 
a British officer, with a party, seeking deserters, 
whereupon an old and devoted colored servant, ready 
of wit, told the officer that two deserters had just 
gone into the barn, on seeing him coming. At once 
they were dragged out and in spite of expostulations, 
hurried away : and the order to burn was not renewed. 
Seventeen houses, however, of American sympathiz- 
ers, were burned through the order, between German- 
town and Philadelphia. 

Washington made his headquarters here on his 
way to the Battle of Brandywine, and he was silent, 
and more than usually grave. He was here again in 
1787, when he was in Philadelphia on account of the 
Constitutional Convention: he rode out to Stenton 
because he had heard of Doctor George Logan, the 
then owner, as a progressive farmer, and wanted to 
see what he was doing, which was a customary thing 
with Washington, always interested, as he was, in 
good farming. He was especially interested, here, 
in the effects of land plaster: and he also spoke of 
his former visit there, in the gloomy times of 1777. 

The battle that surged down Germantown Lane, 
only to go swinging back again, was at least well 
planned and, although a defeat, the audacity of it 
and its nearness to a success deeply affected the 
English. Indeed, its effect was much like that of 
Lexington and Bunker Hill, for it gave a realizing 
sense of the formidable character of the Americans 

293 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

and their leaders ; and it also created a profound im- 
pression upon the French. It was an effort to drive 
the entire British army out of Philadelphia, and it 
came so near success that Howe actually gave orders 
to prepare to leave the city and retreat to Chester. 
The battle took place on October 4, 1777. German- 
town was held by the British (who had their main 
army in Philadelphia) as an outlying post, with 
Washington's army hovering still farther to the 
northward. Washington had recently been defeated 
on the Brandywine, he was outnumbered, and the 
British troops were trained fighters, so that no 
serious attack from him was looked on as possible. 
The Americans advanced in the early morning. The 
thunder of cannon was heard in Philadelphia, and 
reinforcements were hurried off, the grenadiers and 
Highlanders actually running for most of the several 
miles. At eleven o 'clock the noise of battle suddenly 
ceased. The Americans had been sorely hampered 
by a heavy fog which had settled on Germantown 
and which was deepened by the powder smoke. As 
they swept on, a party of more than a hundred of the 
English took possession of the Chew house. Wash- 
ington stopped, to attack this house, following thus 
the urgent advice of General Knox; and he was 
so delayed here that his advancing troops were 
beaten and driven back, and then his main body was 
also caught in the tide of defeat, a drum sounding 
for a parley at the Chew house being an important 
factor, as many, in the fog, took it to be a signal for 
retreat and were seized with panic. 

294 



THE BATTLE STREET OF A VILLAGE 

Both of Washington's favorite generals, Wayne 
and Knox, the two most picturesque figures of the 
war, next to Washington himself, were at German- 
town, and neither of them distinguished himself 
there ; Wayne not advancing as promptly as was ex- 
pected, and Knox giving unfortunate advice by which, 
unfortunately, Washington was impressed. And 
here it is worth while noting the similarities between 
these two remarkable men. Knox was twenty-five 
when the war broke out, and Wayne was thirty. 
Each died at an age between fifty and sixty. Each 
was a handsome man, holding himself with the confi- 
dent bearing that verged closely upon a swagger, 
without being a swagger. Each did one superlatively 
good thing in the Eevolution: Knox got the needed 
cannon at the siege of Boston, and Wayne captured 
Stony Point. Knox was given land, as a reward for 
his war services, in our most northern possession, 
Maine ; and Wayne at the farthest possible southern 
point, Georgia. Each did so many excellent things 
that it is odd that at Germantown both failed their 
chief. 

After the battle, the British did not pursue; and 
the Americans continued to harass them with active 
scouting, and by cutting off supplies. The remark- 
able McLane was particularly active, and tried to 
enter Philadelphia in the disguise of a farmer, in an 
effort to get needed information, but was arrested 
at the city's edge, and sharply questioned, but acted 
and answered so well that he was released : at which 
he hurried off and, returning with a party of his own 

295 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

men, captured the officer and his entire command at 
their post. 

The long and bending street gives an effect of 
houses of gray-plastered stone, rather than the red- 
dish or pinkish aspect of old Philadelphia. There 
is also a permeative effect of ivy and box and dormer 
windows, in spite of the intrusion of much of un- 
attractive modern. The admirable remaining houses 
of the olden time are set close to the sidewalk ; and it 
is a street of wonderful doorways. 

At the junction of Germantown Avenue, or Main 
Street as it is here often referred to, and East Logan 
Street, is a little graveyard where not only are early 
residents of the village buried, but also the British 
General Agnew, who was killed in the battle. Near 
here, on the main street, stood the house of the 
Cunard family, who fled to Nova Scotia as Loyalists ; 
and a son of the family, bom in Nova Scotia in 1787, 
went to England and founded the Cunard Steamship 
Line. 

The house numbered 5106 adds another to the 
already long list of Philadelphia's important associa- 
tions with the navy, for here lived that Commodore 
Barron who killed Commodore Decatur in a duel; 
an act that did not deprive him of standing with the 
Government, for he was Commandant of the Navy 
Yard when he lived here, many years after the tragic 
duel. 

The broad-fronted, dignified old house at Number 
5140 was for several years the home of Gilbert Stuart, 
and here he painted his famous portraits of Washing- 

296 



THE BATTLE STEEET OF A VILLAGE 

ton. One would like to believe that a building of 
rough stone, in front of the house, an odd-shaped 
narrow building with an outside stairway, was his 
studio, but it seems certain that he worked in a barn 
which has been burned. 

Those paintings of Washington, by Stuart, are 
among the most distinguished of the memorials of 
Philadelphia; of those portraits the city has reason 
to be immensely proud, even though it did not retain 
the best, but let it go to Boston, to the Athenaeum. 

Gilbert Stuart was seen by a friend, one day, carry- 
ing a Turkey rug into his studio. * * You extravagant 
man! Why don't you get a Kidderminster?'* To 
which Stuart replied: ''Just wait and see to what 
use I shall put this." The use being, for Washing- 
ton to stand on, for a full-length. 

Every one of that time was interested in what 
Stuart was doing, and when the Comte de Noailles 
heard that a dress sword was to be pictured he sent, 
as a gift, to Stuart, a fine silver-hilted one. But Mrs. 
Stuart, after the portrait was done, took an ill will 
to the sword, and one day had the silver hilt thriftily 
made over into spoons! — ^which a little later were 
stolen by a servant. 

One morning, Stuart was out when Washington 
came to his studio, but he returned a few minutes 
after the President's arrival, just in time to see 
Washington, in towering anger, thrusting a man, a 
servant, from the studio. Stuart walked discreetly 
by, and when in a few minutes he entered, he found 
Washington sitting very composedly. But the Pres- 

297 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

ident must have seen him pass, for he said that, con- 
trary to Stuart's order, this man had turned the un- 
finished portrait face outward, and had then raised 
a great dust, by sweeping, **and perhaps he has 
ruined the portrait!" 

When Gilbert Stuart painted him, Washington had 
just had a set of false teeth inserted, which gave a 
constrained look to the mouth, and made it difficult 
to paint him properly. For Washington, great man 
as he was, suffered from prosaic but painful tooth 
troubles, and as late as 1798 we find him writing to 
his dentist, about making new "bars" for him, and 
not to return the old bars because "I have been 
obliged to file them away so much as to render them 
useless to receive new teeth." The picture of the 
Father of his Country filing away at his false-teeth 
*'bars" is not without pathos. 

At Number 5203, on Germantown Avenue, a now 
done-over old house, Owen Wister, the novelist, the 
grandson of Fanny Kemble, was born; but the real 
Wister house of Germantown is Number 5261, a 
broad-fronted house of rough gray stone, plastered 
in front, with a notable recessed and pillared door. 
It was in this house that Sally Wister wrote her de- 
lightful ''Diary." 

A meeting-house, large but not old, stands at the 
corner of Coulter Street; with monarchs of trees, 
tulips and button woods, about it, and a peaceful brick- 
paved path, and a peaceful graveyard shut in by a 
shingle-topped stone wall, and a pervasive air of 
peace, with vines and box bushes and gentle shade. 

298 



THE BATTLE STEEET OF A VILLAGE 

Diagonally across the street — for all of this comes 
in our progress up Germantown Avenue, or Main 
Street — stood the house where lived for a time that 
man of striking idiosyncrasies, Bronson Alcott. He 
taught school for a time here, but neither his pro- 
found tall^s, nor such charming and advanced 
methods as taking his pupils on walks along the 
Wissahickon (not then a park) with the intent of 
gaining, through natural beauty, a happy influence 
upon their imaginations, nor any of his methods of 
developing the growth of mentality, were successful 
in gaining friends, nor was it appreciated that in his 
school-room there were busts of Christ and Socrates, 
of Shakespeare and Newton and Locke. He was a re- 
markable man; and his daughter, Louisa M. Alcott, 
once wrote, after meeting him at a train on a bitter 
day, that ''he looked cold and thin as an icicle, but 
serene as God." 

Alcott was another of the New Englanders who 
did not gain a footing in Philadelphia; and yet, his 
was a successful stay, here on Germantown Avenue, 
for here it was that Louisa M. Alcott was born. In 
his diary, Alcott noted the birth, and quaintly added, 
"This is a most interesting event"; as indeed it 
proved to be to the vast number who, in later years, 
came to love "Little Women." The family returned 
to New England when Louisa was about two years 
old. 

Facing into the old Market Square is what is 
known as the Morris house, built shortly before the 
Eevolution, and used by President Washington, for 

299 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

portions of 1793 and 1794, as his residence. It is a 
house of plastered stone, with two dormers with 
curved and interlaced lines, with a pillared door in a 
paneled recess, with windows of twenty-four panes, 
with exquisite cornice, with vines growing prettily 
across the front — in all, a house quite fitting for a 
great President's temporary occupancy. The house 
gains reserve through being set back some six feet 
from the sidewalk, small though six feet seems ; and 
it is given an air of complete peacefulness by a great 
garden beside and behind it. 

Washington came in 1793, on account of the yellow 
fever scourge, with his secretary and several men- 
servants, and kept bachelor's hall. The house had 
not then become a Morris house. It was at that time 
owned by a wealthy Hebrew named Isaac Franks, 
who rented it to Washington, making as precaution 
a careful inventory of the furnishings and household 
belongings ; and one notes such items as andirons and 
tables and decanters and ** elegant wine glasses," and 
a china punch bowl and some girandoles, and a double 
set, of seventy-two pieces, of Nankin china; and in 
the stable, some hay and fowls and ducks. 

Particular to a degree was Franks when he came 
to make out his bill, for he claimed that one fork was 
missing and that a japanned waiter was damaged to 
the extent of six shillings ; also, three ducks and four 
fowls were listed as not answering to roll call and 
charged for as fourteen shillings and six pence. 
Franks also charged the expense of two trips, to 
Germantown and back, one to see about getting the 

300 



THE BATTLE STREET OF A VILLAGE 

house ready and the other to see how much longer 
Washington was going to remain: and it seems 
rather humorous that he found that the mighty 
George had gone ! 

But when it came to keeping accounts no one, of 
whatever race, was superior to the master of Mount 
Vernon. He was a free spender and a g-enerous 
man ; but he always knew to a penny where his money 
went. And so he questioned the bill of Franks and 
after some months came to a settlement for not more 
than half of the total that Franks had claimed. 

It was a battle royal, or at least a sharp duel be- 
tween two experts at financial fencing, and as Wash- 
ington won he was magnanimous enough to express 
a willingness to rent the same house, for a time, the 
following year, and the defeated Franks acquiesced. 

During this second occupancy, in the summer of 
1794, Mrs. Washington was with him, and her two 
grandchildren, Eleanor Parke Custis and George 
Washington Parke Custis. 

For this second season Franks charged something 
over two hundred dollars, and I do not find that 
Washington a second time disputed with him. 

The house, in spite of andirons and china, needed 
much more furniture for Mrs. Washington's pres- 
ence, and two loads were sent out from Philadelphia 
at a charge of six dollars; but the charge to haul 
the same things back to Philadelphia was seven 
dollars. And such things are delightful to know. 
They do so humanize it all. 

A little away from the main street, but a few 

301 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

minutes* walk from the Market Square, lived one 
whose name, to those who remember back for some 
forty years or more, is among the most familiarly 
known of all American names ; for here lived Charlie 
Ross, of the tragic and unexplained abduction. 

The ancient Germantown Academy is at School 
House Lane and Greene Street, and it has a worn stone 
sill which is doubtless the same upon which "Washing- 
ton stepped when he visited here. The Academy is a 
long-fronted building of roughish gray stone, topped 
by a quaint little belfry tower, and with balancing little 
stone houses on either side. 

An unusually picturesque old house, understood to 
be the oldest house in Germantown, stands at the 
corner of Main Street and Walnut Lane. With its 
gable end to the street, and its long low white front, 
trellised with ivy and roses and honeysuckle,, it is a 
place of great attractiveness. 

A house at Number 6043, with a fluted-pillared 
doorway, a house of admirable lines, a Shippen house 
in the old days, has some association with pillagers 
and General Cornwallis, who told Mrs. Shippen that 
he had saved a sofa for her by sleeping on it, Corn- 
wallis being in command in Germanto^vn, under 
Howe, immediately before the battle ; and on the day 
of the fight there was some of the very bitterest of 
the struggle close around this house, which long 
showed marks of it; but another interesting connec- 
tion has to do with a later war, or at least a later 
warrior, for in time a school occupied this house, and 
its head-master was afterward head of Washington 

302 



THE BATTLE STREET OF A VILLAGE 

and Lee University ; and one of his daughters became 
the wife of Stonewall Jackson. A little farther, and 
one comes to the old Mennonite Meeting-House, 
built a few years before the Revolution : it is a little 
building of stone of irregular sizes, and its interest- 
ing-looking little graveyard is a little above the 
present level of the street. 

Still farther, and the most important house of all 
is reached, the old Chew house, standing far back from 
the street, within its acreage of an entire city square, 
and looking out just as it looked out on the battle 
day. The British made this so successfully into a 
fort that it caused the defeat of the Americans ; and 
it still bears marks of cannon balls and musketry. 
It is a dignified building of much distinction ; a build- 
ing of light gray stone, with pillared door, and 
dormers with odd little curvings at their base, and 
a pair of stack chimneys, and a gable above the front 
door which is matched by a slightly larger gable in 
the center of the cornice, and a pair of little stone 
lions at the door, and great urns on the roof; and 
with small balancing-buildings on either side of the 
main structure. And its interior, beginning with a 
splendid pillared hallway, satisfactorily bears out the 
impression gained from the outside. 

The Chew who owned the house at the time of the 
Revolution was Benjamin Chew, Chief Justice of the 
Province, who, as I notice in a recent and elaborately 
printed Philadelphia publication, was ''fortunately 
away from home at the time of the battle." One 
would never suspect, from this discreet phrasing, that 

303 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

Chew, on account of disloyalty to the American cause, 
had some time before been placed under arrest and 
carried down into Virginia as a prisoner. 

A young Virginia lieutenant was among those who 
vainly attacked the Chew house ; a lieutenant who was 
to become famous in later years in civil Hf e, and who 
at length died in Philadelphia; and it is vastly in- 
teresting to know that this lieutenant, who gallantly 
joined in the gallant attack upon the home of the 
Chief Justice, was himself the afterwards immensely 
distinguished Chief Justice of the United States for 
more than thirty years ; for he was John Marshall. 




304 



CHAPTEE XX 



OUT THE OLD YOEK KOAD 




|HE Old York Road, one 
of the principal highways 
leading out of Philadel- 
phia, was not planned as a 
road to York in Pennsyl- 
vania, but was to have led to 
the city of New York. But 
ideas changed and plans 
changed, and the highway, 
beginning importantly, gradu- 
ally becomes little more than 
a macadam-surfaced country road, leading now and 
then through a country village, and through miles of 
pleasant countryside, till it reaches the Delaware 
River and, as a highway, comes to an end. But it 
ends at a picturesque American town which has at- 
tracted artists to paint there. 

Approaching the York Road from the center of 
Philadelphia, one may ignore the portion of it with- 
in an unattractively crowded region, and strike into 
it by going straight out Broad Street; which is 
really a street of generous breadth and not broad 
merely by contrast with the mostly narrow thorough- 
fares of the city. Broad Street boasts of being the 

305 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

longest straight-line city street in the world; its en- 
tire length, within the limits of the city, and with- 
out a crook or bend, being ten miles, from the great 
League Island Navy Yard, at the extreme southern 
end of the city, to Olney Avenue, up to the north- 
ward, where the York Road goes across in a 
diagonally wavering line. As I write, work is in 
progress which will increase the length of Broad 
Street ; but here we leave it and follow the Old York 
Road. 

Immediately south of the junction, we pass, facing 
Broad Street, at the right, a hemicycle of massive 
and grooved pillars, standing unrelated to any 
building, monoliths of almost Druid-like effect. 
They are at the entrance to the grounds of the Jew- 
ish Hospital, and are the pillars which fronted the 
beautiful United States Mint, on Chestnut Street. 

Edging York Road immediately north of Olney 
Avenue, where the extension of Broad Street begins, 
is a double line of trees which were set out in the 
long ago by Fanny Kemble, the actress, then Mrs. 
Butler. She wrote, at the time — it was three 
quarters of a century ago — that she had set them 
out, but had not done it very well, though one sees 
by her phrasing that she was really quite proud of 
her tree planting, as every one is of such achieve- 
ments who, having lived only in cities, goes out to 
live in the open country and the open air and under 
the open sky. The only fault with their planting 
seems to have been that they were set a little too 
close together, so that in the course of many years 

306 



OUT THE OLD YORK EOAD 

they have somewhat interfered with each other's 
growth; but the brilliant Fanny's planting cannot be 
blamed if, at length, they succumb to street exten- 
sion. 

Behind these trees is the house, still standing at 
the time I write, but likely soon to vanish, where 
Fanny Kemble came to live after her ill-advised mar- 
riage to Pierce Butler; a house that now is all of 
rusty brown, a rambling house, with double-storied 
balconies across its front. She came back again for 
a time, many years after — long after the divorce — 
and in her memoirs she now and then mentions 
pleasantly having her grandson, a young lad, at this 
house with her; that young lad being now the dis- 
tinguished author, Owen Wister. 

For several miles the York Road leads through a 
region of pleasant homes, with here and there, on 
the main road or on the roads which lead off allur- 
ingly on either side, old pre-Revolutionary mansions 
still inhabited by the socially elect, or modern costly 
seats of the socially ineligible, set within costly 
estates. 

Passing through Oak Lane, Ashbourne and Elkins 
Park, and on toward Jenkinto^vn, the entire region 
is also dotted with stone houses, of recent construc- 
tion, which admirably reproduce in design the 
Colonial architecture of the past. In all, no other 
city in America, and no other city abroad except 
London, has quite such excellently built and at the 
same time architecturally attractive and well-poised 
suburban homes as has Philadelphia, and although 

307 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

the greater number are out the "Main Line," many 
of the most admirable stand at one place or another 
in the general neighborhood of the Old York Road. 

At Ashbourne is the home of John Luther Long, 
who performed a remarkable literary tour de force, 
for he wrote the story which, through its popular- 
ity in its original story form, and then on the 
operatic and moving-picture stages, has won its 
place as the classic story of Japan, ' * Madam Butter- 
fly'^; and it was a tour de force because, although 
the author's parents had lived in Japan, and he had 
often heard them talk about and describe it, he him- 
self had never seen that country. 

Jenkintown has an aspect much like that of a busy 
little English town, and it has a small library build- 
ing of most excellent classic design. And three 
miles to the westward, on Church Road in Wyncote, 
is the home of George Horace Lorimer, whose 
"Letters of a Self -Made Merchant to his Son" sold 
by hundreds of thousands and was translated into a 
dozen or so foreign languages. His home is a large, 
pillared stone house, looking out over a broad lawn 
that is bordered thick with rhododendrons and ever- 
greens. 

Beyond Jenkintown the York Road passes the 
grounds of the Huntington Valley Country Club, 
which seems to be known by golfers everywhere ; and 
the club is notable for its delightful entertainments, 
such as a memorable outdoor presentation of 
"Pomander Walk." The road swings on through 
Abington, passing an oldish church building which 

308 



OUT THE OLD YORK ROAD 

is proud of being the home of one of the first Presby- 
terian church organizations in America. On this 
spot stood the original building ; and here the mighty 
Whitefield came out from the city to preach. A 
little farther, and Willow Grove is reached; a place 
which for years has presented an astonishing 
example of the vast and varied extent of entertain- 
ments, with free concerts by the best bands and 
orchestras, that a trolley company will offer for the 
sake of inducing vast throngs to take trolley rides. 

Here the York Road takes an almost unnoticed 
turn to the right, leaving what seems now the main 
road, and in a few miles you come to a dry open 
field, at a road crossing, with a stone set up, and 
you find that it is a memorial to that unfortunate 
inventor John Fitch, who left his home in Connecti- 
cut and tried, here at the edge of Philadelphia, to 
perfect his idea of a boat to be propelled by steam, 
only to be beaten in the race by Fulton, who was 
born near Philadelphia. The invention had been 
almost perfected, by one inventor or another, for 
years, but the most notable who strove for the honor 
and the priority were these two. 

Throughout his life Fitch just missed being 
successful. He was a clock repairer, a silversmith, 
a maker of brass sleevebuttons, a jack of all trades. 
Following years of sailoring in youth, he wandered 
again after marriage, on account of the scolding 
habits of his wife, who looked upon him as a Rip 
Van Winkle and could not understand that his 
dreamings could possibly be of so much value as 

309 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

hoeing the potatoes. He went down the Ohio River, 
aiming for New Orleans, in the course of the Revo- 
lution, and was captured by the Indians and then 
held prisoner by the British. His one great idea in 
life was steam navigation, and when he was settled 
here, beside the Old York Road, he succeeded in so 
impressing twenty men that they put in fifty dollars 
each and with the money he built a model and made 
it go. That the Governor and Council of the State 
presented him with a silk flag represents all that he 
got out of his precious idea. He went to France 
to forward his plans, but failed, and came back to 
America, and went again out into the wilderness, 
and in 1798 drowned himself, thus ending a career 
of which one is reminded by this stone, set in an 
oddly dry location for a steamboat inventor. That 
he stood six feet and two inches in his stocking feet, 
and that he had very black hair and black eyes, is 
about all that is remembered of him. 

Fulton went, like Fitch, to France in the hope of 
gaining necessary help; and how he found it makes 
one of the most romantic of tales. It is told in the 
memoirs of the son of Albert Gallatin, the great finan- 
cier. 

While the Reign of Terror was raging Fulton, who 
had been in Paris, decided to make his way to 
London. Waiting for the boat at Calais — not then 
the familiar channel steamer of the present day! — 
he noticed a young woman who seemed to be in such 
great trouble that he spoke to her, when it appeared 
that her husband was ill in England, that she had 

310 



OUT THE OLD YORK ROAD 

made a secret trip to Paris on account of some prop- 
erty matters, that she found both herself and her 
husband proscribed, that she had no passport and 
might at any moment be arrested, and that arrest 
would mean the guillotine. Fulton acted ^Yith typ- 
ical American gallantry. He had a passport which 
had been made out for Mrs. Fulton and himself. 
His wife was not with him. **Let me call you Mrs. 
Fulton as far as Dover," he said. Together they 
crossed; at Dover they parted; and Fulton did not 
even know her name. 

Some years afterwards, in Paris, when times had 
altogether changed, he was in a crowded theater and 
caught sight of a beautiful woman, handsomely 
gowned and bejeweled, who motioned him to her 
box. It was the lady of Calais, and now her hus- 
band was with her, one of the wealthiest of French 
dukes; and it was through these two, in their 
gratitude, that the money was secured by Fulton 
which made possible his success. I do not know on 
what authority young Gallatin had this, but he and 
his distinguished father were long-time dwellers in 
Paris and were just the kind to learn of such a curious 
story. 

Over and over, one sees what romantic actualities 
lie waiting in this country for the poet or the novel- 
ist. Sir Walter Scott himself would have liked 
Fulton's fine gallantry — and I mention Scott again 
because of his persistently deeming that America 
could offer only trees, leaving history and romance 
to Europe! — and Scott would have liked still more 

311 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

the history and romance of Graeme Park, because 
of its connection with the Scottish uprising of 1715 
in favor of the Stuarts. 

Sir William Keith, governor of Pennsylvania 
from 1717 to 1726 (technically, like many of the 
Colonial governors, Deputy Governor, but Governor 
in actuality and always referred to as such), built, 
at the beginning of his term of office, a mansion, still 
standing, in Horsham Township, twenty miles north 
of Philadelphia, in an estate now known as Graeme 
Park, in a region of gentle undulations, of running 
brooks and splendid trees. Of excellent lineage, he 
was fascinated by the old British idea of having a 
distinguished mansion and a widespreading estate 
far from any town. 

He first came to America to assume a compara- 
tively minor post in Virginia, but returned to Great 
Britain to take part in the rising of the Stuart 
adherents in 1715. After the crushing of the at- 
tempt, Keith escaped, and even succeeded in hiding 
the fact that he had taken part, although it was 
known that his brothers had participated. And he 
was actually able to secure the post of governor of 
this great province, under the King against whom he 
had taken up arms! The fact of his having been 
in rebellion was strongly suspected, and from time 
to time charges or innuendoes were advanced, but no 
definite proof could be adduced, and he retained his 
high office. 

I have read that he escaped after the defeat of 
Sheriffmuir by hiding in the house of a family 

312 



OUT THE OLD' YORK EOAD 

named Graeme till the pursuit was over; and that 
is probably the story which his enemies tried to 
fasten upon him. 

At any rate, when he came back to America, as 
Governor of Pennsylvania, he brought with him the 
son of the Graeme family, who became a well-known 
doctor, and married Keith's stepdaughter, and be- 
came owner of Graeme Park after Keith's death. 
Writing of it, in 1755, to Thomas Penn, Doctor 
Graeme said: *'I have a park which encloses three 
hundred acres of land. I have double-ditched and 
double-hedged it and I dare venture to say that no 
nobleman in England but would be proud to have it 
for his seat." 

The estate has lost much of its impressiveness 
from the neglect of generations since its grand old 
days, but there are still to be seen the wrecked and 
grassed-over remains of terraces, and wrecked stone 
walls in. the fields or where once were the elaborate 
gardens. 

The house has also lost the glory of two centuries 
ago, and stands bare-fronted, looking out forlornly 
into a grove of giant locusts and sycamores; a tall, 
prim, four-dormered house of chocolate-colored field 
stone. It is in a location rather hard to find, but the 
wellnigh lost road upon which it is tucked away still 
retains the name of Governor's Eoad. 

The interior is even more desolate than the out- 
side, but there are striking remains of the early 
grandeur in the splendid paneling of the entire prin- 
cipal downstairs room, in the pediments and cornio- 

313 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

ing, iu the remains of most excellent handiwork, in 
the great chamber on the second floor, with its semi- 
circular door-heads. 

But, for Keith, it all ended unhappily ; for he went 
back to England and died in a debtors' prison, and 
his widow lingered on, in wretched poverty, a 
recluse, till her lonely death, here in the heart of old 
Philadelphia. But the general misfortune did not 
affect Doctor Graeme, who even took to himseK the 
naming of the estate! 

Graeme had a brilliant daughter who, sent over to 
England for a time, attracted attention by her wit 
and good looks. At the racetrack, one day, she 
made a successful bet on an unpromising horse, and 
her cleverness and vivacity led an odd-looking but 
somehow distinguished man to ask for an introduc- 
tion; and it was Sterne, of ''Tristram Shandy." 

Returning to America she secretly married, 
against her father's wishes, a man named Ferguson: 
and on the day on which she had decided to confess 
her marriage to her father she watched in trembling 
fear, from a window of this old house at Graeme 
Park, as he approached — and saw him suddenly fall 
in the pathway, only to be carried into the house, 
dead. 

Returning from Graeme Park to the York Road 
through little Hatboro, we again turn northward, 
and follow for miles through pleasantly diversified 
country, passing an ancient house in which, before 
the march to the Brandywine, which was down this 
road, Was)iington had his headquarters, and near 
' 314 



OUT THE OLD YOEK EOAD 

which his army was camped, and where Lafayette, 
who had met the Commander-in-Chief in Philadel- 
phia, first actually joined the army. 

Then more miles, and tiny Buckingham is passed, 
a place with a gentle flavor of the long ago, with an 
ancient crossroads tavern which is, or at least was, 
famous for its chicken dinners, for Cibberite diners 
who might exclaim, ''Oif with their heads! So 
much for Buckingham!" The tiny village retains 
the full name, but the county, following English- 
fashion, carries but the abbreviation "Bucks." 

The road bends to the eastward, and the hills are 
more prominent, and picturesque New Hope is 
reached, overlooking, from its terracings and irre- 
gularities, the broad Delaware; a place of sweetly 
charming impressions, especially for such as know the 
charming little villages of Europe; a place to which 
painters have learned to pilgrimage. There are 
jSne old doorways and a high-perched church, there 
are numerous little old homes, there are unexpected 
water courses, and a canal with mule-teams pacing 
slowly tandem, and there are waterside gardens; it 
is a town crowded between hills and river ; and here, 
the road ending its ambitious effort to reach New 
York, one may go where he will : and nothing is more 
delightful than to cross the bridge across the Dela- 
ware, and swing down the farther bank to Washing- 
ton's Crossing: the spot where Washington crossed 
the Delaware on that memorable Christmas night in 
1776 when, in spite of snow and sleet and bitter cold 
and drifting ice, he got his men over the river, led 

315 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

them to do the impossible, and won a glorious 
victory. 

I have seen it published, with the authority of a 
very high name in matters of history, that Washing- 
ton, just before Trenton, a year before Valley Forge, 
wrote that **the game is pretty near up." But this 
is one of the half-truths which are so utterly mislead- 
ing as to be absolute untruths. To his brother, 
Augustine Washington, General Washington wrote, 
in December of 1776, "If every nerve is not strained 
to recruit the new army with all possible expedition, 
I think the game is pretty near up" ; which is very dif- 
ferent indeed from taking the words without their 
context ; and farther on in the same letter he writes, 
** However, under a full persuasion of the justice of 
our cause, I cannot entertain an idea, that it will 
finally sink, tho' it may remain for some time under 
a cloud." 

The cloud rose very shortly after this; but King 
George thought it would settle down again, for, 
writing to Lord North to express regret for the 
disaster at Trenton, he added, *'But I am certain 
by a letter I have seen from Lord Cornwallis that 
the rebells (the double **1" is the *' King's 
English"!) will soon have sufficient reason to fall 
into the former dejection." But Cornwallis, the 
English were to learn, was not a particularly reliable 
prophet as to "rebells." 

It is thrilling to be at the very Crossing, even 
though on a warm day of summer, when there is 
nothing to see but bungalows and canoes and a rail- 

316 



OUT THE OLD YOEK ROAD 

way bridge which now spans the stream from one 
low bank to the other. A simple monument marks 
the spot; and one thinks of the boy who, looking 
critically at the well-known picture of the Crossing, 
remarked that Washington certainly did not stand 
up in his boat! 

The road leads on to busy Trenton, where "Wash- 
ington took the English and Hessians so completely 
by surprise. Within that city, one need not, as at 
Germantown, look for definite memorials of the 
battle: but a noble battle monument, with a fine in- 
scription, seems to dominate the entire city. 

A battle could scarcely be of more importance to 
a nation than was this of Trenton; and the losses 
point out that the importance of a battle does not 
depend on the number of men killed. For Washing- 
ton lost only two men killed and two men frozen to 
death, and even the enemy lost less than two score 
officers and men killed; but they did lose almost a 
thousand prisoners! 

The great Eobert Morris is not a monumented 
man, well though he deserves to be. And I speak 
of this here, because, turning toward Philadelphia 
and recrossing the river, to the Pennsylvania side, 
I came upon the only monument to him that I re- 
member. And even this is not a monument, but an 
inn-sign ; one of the most fascinating of old inn-signs 
to be seen in America, in front of a shabby-looking 
old inn, with factories now crowded close about; and 
Morris is pictured as a rotund man, offering to the 
Father of his Country a bag, looking like an English 

317 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

plum-pudding, and tied with a string, but meant to 
be a bag of gold, representing the noble offering, by 
Morris, of his private fortune, which saved the 
nation. 

Rather than return direct to Philadelphia from 
Trenton, one may run up to tree-shaded Princeton, 
only a few miles away ; the most beautiful of Ameri- 
can college towns, the nearest approach to Oxford on 
this side of the ocean. The university was founded 
before the Revolution, and the town has much of the 
atmosphere of the stately past, and offers some 
superb college architecture of the present day. 

Washington went to Princeton a few days after the 
Battle of Trenton. Cornwallis had hurried up from 
New York, and had so hemmed in the American army 
at Trenton that destruction seemed inevitable. But 
on the night before the arranged-for destruction was 
to occur, Washington left his camp-fires tended and 
burning, to let Cornwallis believe that he was 
patiently waiting to be destroyed, and marched off 
by an unexpected road to Princeton — for although 
Washington did not use a French word to describe it, 
nor employ artists, he well understood the practice 
of numerous kinds of ''camouflage." 

The thunder of cannon from the direction of 
Princeton told the amazed Cornwallis that the de- 
struction of the American army must be postponed. 
And at the college to^m, Washington charged in upon 
the British encamped there, and most completely de- 
feated them. 

A portrait of King George the Second hung in their 

318 



OUT THE OLD YORK ROAD 

honored old Nassau Hall, and an American cannon 
ball irretrievably damaged the painting, and some 
time after the battle Washington sent two hundred 
and fifty dollars from his own purse with an expres- 
sion of regret that the college should have suffered 
the loss of a portrait. To which the college replied 
that it was not a loss, and that, if Washington would 
permit — which he did — they would give Charles 
Willson Peale the money, to paint a portrait of 
Washington himself to put in the King George 
frame. And the portrait is still there, with Wash- 
ington wearing his sword, in the foreground, and 
Nassau Hall in the background, and the gallant Gen- 
eral Mercer dying in between: and I hope it is not 
wicked to remember that, as there was no portrait 
of Mercer to follow, Peale painted in the head of 
Mercer's brother, adding a languid expression to fit 
the feelings of a dying hero. 

Both Trenton and Princeton, though fought with 
small American losses, were of immense importance 
and were splendid examples of daring generalship. 
When Napoleon expressed to Lafayette his feeling 
that our Revolutionary battles were small, Lafayette 
enthusiastically explained that it was not a matter of 
smallness of numbers but of largeness of success. 
And it has been said that Frederick the Great, with 
somewhat of over-enthusiasm, once declared that the 
Trenton and Princeton campaigning was the most 
brilliant in military history. When, after the sur- 
render at Yorktown, Washington gave a formal 
dinner to the principal American, French and British 

319 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

officers, he offered as a courteous toast, * ' The British 
Army," and made pleasantly complimentary re- 
marks as to Cornwallis, its head ; at which Cornwallis, 
meeting courtesy with courtesy, spoke with praise of 
[Washington and declared that history would in time 
come to see that the war had really been won at 
Trenton and Princeton, even more than at York- 
town. 




320 



CHAPTER XXI 



THE WAYNE LINE 




COUPLE of gentlemen 

with bags of human 

bones ride fascinatingly 

through early American 

history. Cobbett 

iy took the bones of 

poor Tom Payne in a 

bag and traveled with 

them to New York City 

and across the ocean to 

England, and there lost them one day in leaving an 

inn; as a man will even now forget his packages in 

leaving an inn. 

And there was Anthony Wayne, buried far out on 
the very verge of civilization, but with the highest 
military honors, under the flagstaff of the fort at 
Presque Isle, now quiet Erie. To his family (there 
are now no direct descendants, only collateral, but 
he then had a son) it seemed wrong to leave him in 
that lonely and distant spot, and so the devoted son 
journeyed thitherward to the then far West, and he 
gathered up the bones from where they lay in the 
shadow of the fluttering flag of the fort on Lake Erie, 
and he placed the bones in a bag and adjusted his 

321 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

honored burden across his horse's back, and then 
came slowly homeward, picking his way heedfuUy 
over the mountain trails and through the great 
forests, with day after day of tremendous solitude. 
And thus did General Anthony Wayne come riding 
back to the home of his ancestors. 

Local annals long ago changed the horse to a gig 
to give the journey more of supposed dignity; but 
nothing could be more impressive than the horse. 
And gigs were not common in those days on the trail 
to the verge of civilization. Now and then an ox- 
team, now and then a heavy cart; and the rest was 
horseback or on foot: and horseback was doubtless 
the method of the relative with the bones. It is pos- 
sible that friends met him, with wagons or carriages 
freely offered, but I picture him as appreciating the 
fitness of things and solemnly completing his home- 
ward journey on horseback to the old Wayne home- 
stead. And this great citizen of Philadelphia — for 
his home, although technically not in the city, was 
less than fifteen miles away — lies in old St. David's 
churchyard. 

To Americans of the region of Lake Erie, the 
body of General Wayne, the man sent out to retrieve 
the crushing disaster of St. Clair, the man who so 
splendidly justified the friendship and confidence of 
Washington by his tremendous victory on the banks 
of the Maumee, was buried with honor at Erie, and 
although they know, out there, that his bones went 
a-horsebacking, they feel that his spirit is still with 
them. 

322 



THE WAYNE LINE 

"What a personality was his! How tremendously 
he impressed himself! With the insight of true 
greatness he saw in Washington a greater than him- 
self and trusted implicitly his guidance and judg- 
ment and followed implicitly his orders: and with 
what verve and dash, with what cool fearlessness I 

I have noticed, in unspoiled country regions of 
Ohio, how Wayne is still remembered: if, for 
example, there are still traces of some ancient and 
forgotten corduroy road through a woodland swamp 
it will be referred to as ''General Wayne's road," 
though it may be many miles from where Wayne 
actually took his troops. 

The suburban towns that lead out from Phila- 
delphia on the Main line, which might well be 
termed the Wayne Line, stand in such continuous 
built-up sequence as to make it impossible to see 
where the city ends and the suburbs begin, or where 
suburb merges into suburb, and they are among the 
charming features of Philadelphia. And that the 
suburbs here, as elsewhere around the city, end at 
fifteen miles from the city's center, leaving the 
region beyond that to be deemed country, marks a 
curious difference between this city of restraints and 
the far-flung city of New York, whose suburbs only 
begin at very little under fifteen miles and thence 
stretch out to fifty. 

The station names of Wayne, St. David's, Paoli, 
names which arouse such thoughts of Anthony 
Wayne, are near together at practically the end of 
Philadelphia's commuting distance; in fact it was 

323 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

weU expressed by an intelligent colored youth who, 
as a sort of reward of merit, had been sent on an 
excursion to Niagara FaUs and who kept his eyes 
very wide open and his memory active, and on his 
return was ready to tell exhaustively, had that been 
desired, of what he had seen; and who began, mth 
the unconscious Alexander-like desire of his race 
for new words to conquer, ''The houses w'uh thick 
as fah out as Pianola/* 

Haverford, with its college, is among the first of 
the stations, and soon comes Bryn Mawr, the home 
of Bryn Mawr College, among the most notable of 
girls' colleges, with beautiful buildings and a pretty 
scholastic air: and, in time of peace, very beautiful 
May Day pageantry. 

The name of Bryn Mawr is remindful of how very 
important the Welsh were in early days. For it is 
not a Welsh name chosen for mere oddity. Welsh 
names are surprisingly common in the vicinity of 
Philadelphia, and they represent an important 
factor in the early days of settlement; and even 
Penn, though his immediate ancestors were Enghsh, 
deemed himself of Welsh extraction. Brjm Mawr 
and Bryn Athyn, Cynwyd, Llanerch and Penllyn, 
Gwynedd and North Wales, Eadnor and Merion, 
Tredyffryn, Crumllyn and Duffryn Mawr — such are 
among the many Welsh names of the general neigh- 
borhood, which have adhered since the days of early 
settlement. 

The suburban towns of the Main Line, making in 
reahty one continuous suburban settlement, with a 

324 



THE WAYNE LINE 

general effect of charming homes set in charming 
environment, unitedly form a highly attractive ap- 
proach to the home of the distingnished General 
Wayne. 

Some two miles from Paoli, where Wayne suffered 
a famous and unfortunate defeat, stands the house 
which was his birthplace and home, a house adequate 
to his reputation, a house of brownish field-stone, 
softly weathered, with a central door topped by a 
hood of interesting irregularity, with two dormers, 
with two great square twin chimneys, with a kitchen 
wing (now the library), containing a fireplace so 
huge as easily to permit of clambering up or down 
— so much a matter of practicality, this, as to have 
a grating set in to prevent this very thing from 
being done. 

The house dates back to half a century before the 
E-evolution. It is a broad and substantial mansion, 
and still contains the greater portion of the great 
general's household furniture. It looks out over a 
pastoral country, and is set about with great trees, 
and in an old-time garden beside it grows an 
enormous box bush, at which the British troopers, on 
the night of the Paoli fight, slashed with their sabers 
when they came galloping here in the hope of cap- 
turing the defeated general : defeated once, but never 
afterwards ! 

That the Paoli affair is still so important in 
memories of the Eevolution, and that the name is so 
generally familiar, is due to its having meant so 
much to so important a personage as Wayne. 

325 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

After the British landed at the head of Chesapeake 
Bay, and fought the Battle of the Brandywine, they 
struck north toward the Schuylkill instead of aiming 
straight at Philadelphia, the intent being to swing 
across to the Delaware, north of the city, and hold 
"Washington and his army helpless. But fortun- 
ately, Washington was watchfully aware of the 
danger, and prepared to leave the city rather than 
be hemmed in. Meanwhile General Wayne wrote 
him that he was closely watching the advance of the 
British in the vicinity of Paoli and hoped to inflict 
such a blow as would be fatal to their plans. 

W^ayne encamped at Paoli with 1500 men. A mile 
away were 1800 additional Americans, ready to join 
forces with him. But in the night, a few hours be- 
fore the joining was arranged to take place, General 
Grey, a stern, swift man, a soldier of uncanny 
celerity, swept in upon Wayne ^s camp. Before the 
attack, every British soldier was ordered to knock 
out his flints. The surprise must depend upon the 
bayonet alone. It was a splendid attack. All was 
over in a few minutes. The large force from only 
a mile away, which started at the first! firing to 
Wayne's aid, came up only after the British had 
got off, taking booty and prisoners with them. It 
was not a ''massacre," as it is so often called, but 
a successful surprise attack. For once in his life 
AVayne was caught napping, and with difficulty made 
his own escape from the rout. 

One of General Grey's most gallant officers, an 
aide-de-camp, aiding him in that impetuous rush, 

326 



THE WAYNE LINE 

was Andre, who was so soon to ingratiate himself in 
Philadelphia society, following the occupation of the 
city by the British, after Washington withdrew. 
Philadelphia has always so loved Andre as never, 
whether in early days or recent, to resent his lines 
on General Wayne in ' ' The Cow Chace ' ' ; for Andre 
thought it delightfully humorous to describe Wayne, 
whom the British themselves knew to be an officer 
of the highest honor, and one who observed the 
decencies of warfare, as directing his men to *' ravish 
wife and daughter" of the Loyalists. The very 
extravagance of the idea caused it to be unheeded; 
and, in justice to Andre, it may be considered, on 
account of Paoli, that his personal knowledge of 
Wayne must have given the impression of a careless 
commander with whom versifying liberties might be 
taken. 

Andre so loved to write doggerel verse about 
others, that perhaps he would have been amused, 
had it been possible for him to read them, by some 
lines written about himself by James Smith, an 
Englishman, of the once well-known '^Eejected 
Addresses": 

** Within the lines taken, a prisoner brought off, 
They troubled him with a line more than he thought of ; 
For, finding the young man's dispatches not trim. 
To shorten my story, Bob, they dispatched him." 

In the Wayne homestead, above his portrait, hang 
the general's sword and pistols. He was a hand- 
some man ; he carried himself with an air, and a very 

327 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

fetching and gallant air it was. But, after one of 
his victories — it was Stony Point — Congress voted 
that a medal be struck in his honor, and a representa- 
tion of himself was put on the medal. But how 
changed a man ! Gone is the upright military bear- 
ing, gone is the look of cheerful openness, gone is the 
bravery, the ruffling daring, and he is bashfully re- 
ceiving from an Indian woman a *' mural crown," 
such as Komans were given who stormed a walled 
place; it is really like the old-time pictures of a 
cinctured Eve handing an apple to a reluctant Adam. 
That an alligator also figures adds to the queerness 
of it, and the inscription describes Congress as 
**Comitia Americana" and ^ayne himself as 
*' Antonio"! 

When the news of Wayne *s death, far out in the 
Ohio country, came creeping sadly eastward through 
the black forests, it is said to have somberly ended 
a twilighted romance, a romance of middle age. 
And, if the story is a true story and not some one 's 
fancy, his death meant as much to the woman he was 
to have married as if she had still been in the full 
flush of youth: indeed, it must have meant much 
more. 

There were two Mary Vinings of that interesting 
town to the southward, old Wilmington, and they 
were aunt and niece. Regarding each of them, tales 
of their beauty and of hosts of admirers have come 
traditionally down. Not only were there American 
admirers, but French and British officers also joined 
the devoted circles. The aunt is said to have been 

328 



THE WAYNE LINE 

vainly courted by Caesar Eodney himself, than which 
it is impossible to say anything stronger in little and 
loyal Delaware. 

The niece did not meet the man she wanted, among 
the throng of admirers. She passed her girlhood 
days, and the early years of young womanhood, with- 
out marrying; and then, so at least the old story 
runs, was made love to by Anthony Wayne, then a 
widower, and the two became engaged, and even a 
set of china was picked out by him as a wedding gift 
to his bride. And then, absent in the West, he died. 

Gradually, she faded away. She lost the beauty 
that had so drawn admirers. She lost her money. 
Plain of face, and poor, she lived in one room in a 
little boarding house, and only once in a long while 
would creep off to the old Swedes' Church of Wil- 
mington with her face hidden by shawl and bonnet, 
so sensitive was she in regard to her lost beauty. 
And her poor and humble existence dragged on for a 
quarter of a century after the death of Anthony 
Wayne. 

Wayne himself lies buried in the little churchyard 
of a little church which dates back over two centuries, 
for its cornerstone was laid in long-ago 1715. All 
about is the sweeping beauty of gentle landscape. It 
is like the church of Gray's ''Elegy" existent here in 
America, in its quiet charm, in the sweetness of its 
surroundings, the glimmering landscape, the drowsy 
tinklings, the solemn stillness, the turf heaving in 
many a moldering heap — all of that is here, with 
all the serenity and peace. 

329 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

It was a church of the "Waynes before the time 
of the doughty Anthony, for among the vestrymen 
of 1725 was an earlier Anthony Wayne, his grand- 
father. For years, no pews were built, for each 
family supplied its own bench. Later, ground space 
was sold, upon which the members built their own 
pews. The little church has an outside stone stair- 
way, leading to a gallery, now partially removed, 
whose erection was supervised by Anthony Wayne, 
the vestryman grandfather. In all, it is a charming 
place to give impressions of delightfulness and of 
times that are long, long past. 

The rector when the Eevolution began was 
William Currie, and he had then been rector for 
thirty-nine years. For him, the only right course 
was to support the King. But he could not do this 
and remain rector. So he resigned, and remained 
quietly at his home, loved and honored. After the 
treaty of peace absolved him from his oath to 
royalty, he again assumed charge of the church, and 
was rector until his death in 1787, at the age of 
ninety-three ; and the sturdy old man is buried under- 
neath the chancel window. Sturdy stock, whether 
American or British in sympathy, was honored 
where the influence of the Waynes was potent. 

During the war the church was abandoned, and the 
lead of the windows was melted for bullets. 

Longfellow, who did so much to blazen and 
perpetuate the fame of New England and European 
worthies, wrote somewhat of Pennsylvania men also. 
He wrote some verses about Bayard Taylor, whose 

330 



THE WAYNE LINE 

home was at Kennett Square, southwest of the city, 
and they began with that superb line for a literary 
man's eulogy, ''Dead he lay among his books." 
And he wrote of the church beside which Anthony 
Wayne lies buried; he wrote of old St. David's, and 
instantly at the thought the attention is aroused. 
Longfellow could not but write sweetly of a church 
that has so sweetly endured for over two centuries, 
and he could not but write nobly and romantically 
of so noble and romantic a man as Wayne. 

But there comes a strange disappointment. St. 
David's is not in New England or in Europe and the 
lines are rather weak, about 

* ' The narrow aisle, the bare white wall, 
The pews, and the pulpit quaint and tall. ' ' 

And Anthony Wayne was not a New Englander or 
a knight of old — and there is not a single word in 
regard to him, no mention that the great man lies 
here! Nor was it that the body of Wayne was not 
here when Longfellow wrote, for the horseback ride 
of the dead general was even then a thing of the 
years that were past. 




331 



CHAPTER XSfl 

THE THREE b's OF THE EIVERSIDE 




HE three old 
towns of Bris- 
tol, Burling- 
ton and Borden- 
town are grouped 
pleasantly near to- 
gether, up the Del- 
aware ; the three 
B's of the river- 
side. Yet neither 
those interesting 
old towns, nor any other of the old-time towns 
near Philadelphia, are connected with the city, or 
have had close relations with it, or intimate in- 
fluence on it, in any large degree. Neither the three 
B's, nor Chester, nor Wilmington, have been of an 
importance to Philadelphia even remotely approach- 
ing that of Salem and Quincy to Boston. Philadel- 
phia has drawn but slightly on her suburbs: and I 
am not referring to the new suburban towns which 
are merely the city itself extended beyond the city 
limits, but to the interesting, old-time, town entities. 
Philadelphia has grown by herself, has developed 
within herself, and the ancient nearby towns have 

332 



THE THREE B'S OF THE RIVERSIDE 

separately grown by themselves: and this unnsual 
condition has had much to do with the growth and 
maintenance of Philadelphian individuality. 

Bristol is an ancient town, traditionally American. 
In early days it was of high importance, and the 
glamour of that distinguished past still remains. The 
little town sleeps w4th its full length stretched along 
the Delaware, which glows and gleams in its great 
shimmering width beside it; it is a one-street town, 
for Radcliffe Street, running beside the river, holds 
what there is of interest. 

The ''Spanish Ambassador" is still a fascinating 
name that lingers in the imagination in regard to 
Revolutionary days; or '* Spanish Minister," as the 
title is alternatively termed, and it seems in particu- 
lar as if it lingers here in ancient Bristol, even more 
than in Morristown, although in that town one of 
the Spanish ambassadors was buried, in velvet and 
diamonds, with remarkable pomp. Not that there 
was in those days, any literal ''Spanish Ambas- 
sador," or even "Spanish Minister" but that there 
was a succession of representatives, really charges d* 
affaires, sent over by Spain in the early days, with 
somewhat of informality of status, as if Spain were 
trying to be ready to please the United States and, 
should affairs go wrong with us, at the same time 
not to please us so much as too formally to commit 
herself in the eyes of Europe. 

One of these picturesque representatives was that 
Spaniard with the picturesque name, Don Josef de 
Jaudenes Y Nebot; he pronounced it Waudeneth; 

333 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

whose portrait, and that of his wife, the lovely Dona 
Matilde Stoughton de Jaudenes, who was a Massa- 
chusetts girl, smile at us, in gorgeousness of jewels 
and color, from the canvases by Gilbert Stuart in the 
Metropolitan Museum in New York. 

Another was Don Carlos Martinez de Yrujo, a 
Spanish Marquis, who was sent over by King Carlos 
the Fourth in 1796, and, making his home in Phila- 
delphia, which was then the seat of the American 
Government, married one of the most attractive of 
Philadelphia girls, Sally McKean, daughter of the 
Chief Justice, and later the Governor, of the State, 
and one of the social as well as political leaders. 

We have a glimpse of pretty Sally McKean, at one 
of the receptions of ''Lady "Washington," Mrs. 
George Washington, and Sally, as she has always 
been called, wore a blue satin dress trimmed with 
white crape and flowers, and petticoat of white crape 
richly embroidered, and a festoon of rose color 
caught up with flowers. Of the marquis himself, 
President Washington has left an agreeable but 
cautious description. "A young man, very agree- 
able and easy in his manners, professes to be well 
disposed towards the United States, and as far as a 
judgment can be formed on so slight an acquaintance, 
appears to be well informed. ' ' 

The couple, like Jaudenes and his American wife, 
were painted by Gilbert Stuart. The marquis is rep- 
resented as a dashing, good-looking man, with oval 
face, high eyebrows and longish chin, a ruffled- 
fronted man, looking very confident indeed of him- 

334 



THE THREE B'S OF THE RIVERSIDE 

self; and Sally McKean, the Marchioness D'Yrujo is 
a stately and lovely young woman, with low-cut dress 
and short sleeves, and a necklace of pearls, and 
pearls in her dark hair. 

In those days Bristol was a fashionable summer 
resort for the rich folk of Philadelphia, and there 
were baths and dancing and pompous display; 
and a yellowish old house is pointed out as being 
actually ''the house of the Spanish Ambassador," 
and little tales are still told of such things as how 
he bridged a tiny brooklet within the grounds and 
how he used to fire a tiny cannonette and in general 
comported himself in a boyishly human manner. 

An odd-looking, quaint-shaped humorous little 
town building, amuses the townsfolk, who tell of it 
as having been put up almost at a day's notice to save 
a bequest for the city which had been forgotten and 
had almost lapsed by expiration. 

The gardens bordering the waterside, the houses, 
with here and there an ancient one, looking out across 
the widespread sweep of water, the shading trees, 
the general air of a stately and vanished time, make 
the long street pleasantly suggestive. 

Bristol dates from a tiny settlement made a year 
before the settling of Philadelphia; and Burlington, 
reached by a little ferry, on the other side, the New 
Jersey side, of the river, is a few years older than 
Bristol. Chancing into Burlington one day recently, 
I picked up a fine specimen of glass, a wine-glass. 
That it was old was evident; full examination at 
home pointed to about 1680, according to English 

335 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

authorities. I hesitated to believe in my own good 
fortune; **But,'* said a collecting friend to whom, 
with admiration and expression of doubt, I showed 
it, **do not forget that Burlington is an old town in 
which the old may naturally still be found ; for it was 
founded in 1677, several years before the coming of 
William Penn." 

The High Street of Burlington leads away at right 
angles from the river, and is amazingly rich in colors, 
the houses and stores offering swift alternations of 
red and yellow and brown and green and white, all 
dinnned and dulled and some of the colors even dingy. 
For it is, in appearance, a decrepit old place, show- 
ing its age with a sort of disconsolate bravery. 
There is a sprinkling of the very old, among the first 
buildings away from the river, among such as are 
merely fairly old, and in a few blocks there is still 
more of the atmosphere of the old. Some of the 
houses are beautiful in design, and there is much of 
pleasant greenery, and much of English ivy creeping 
over trees and walls, and the old houses are mostly 
set close to the sidewalk, with gardens behind. 
There are also sedate little side streets, with here 
and there a charming ancient home. One of the 
yellowish old gambrel-roofed houses has the date of 
1703 set in it's ancient gable. There is a peaceful 
tree-set church, not itself old but grave and quiet as 
if it were old, and there is an ancient burying-ground 
with the date above its gateway of 1702. There are 
still to be found, tucked away here and there, big 
houses of the early aristocracy, some of them still 

336 



THE THREE B'S OF THE RIVERSIDE 

showing their silver doorknobs; and the *'Bankside," 
facing out toward the river, still gives evidence that 
it was once a place of dignified charm, in the days 
when Governor William Franklin, the son of Ben- 
jamin, had his home there. 

But the most interesting association with Burling- 
ton is that here the Leatherstocking author, J. Feni- 
more Cooper, was born, in the house at what is now 
459 High Street; a yellow^chimneyed, red-roofed, 
white-plaster-fronted house, with little high stoop 
and slightly recessed door, a house beside which stand 
some ancient dying trees. Cooper and Burlington 
have no association apart from that of his birth here, 
for his parents were but passing through, and had 
not expected that the future novelist was to be born 
a Burlingtonian ; but even this much of association 
is worth while, with so entertainingly distinguished 
a man. 

A few miles above Burlington, on the same side of 
the Delaware, is Bordentown, a name which arouses 
a flood of memories and of romantic thoughts, for 
Joseph Bonaparte, who had been King of Naples and 
King of Spain, built at Bordentown a stately mansion, 
and when that burned, another stately mansion; and 
a long succession of titled men of the vanished Em- 
pire, generals and statesmen, made this part of the 
Delaware River region glitter with their presence 
and their fame. 

Patience Wright, who won fame as a maker of wax 
portraits, was born in Bordentown, and, going to 
England to work at her art, made friends of the 

337 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

great and powerful, including the King and Queen, 
who used to visit her studio, and invite her to AVind- 
sor. She called the King ** George" and the Queen 
''Charlotte," but finally lost their favor by in- 
advisedly insisting that the Colonies were sure to 
win, which could scarcely be a favorable line of con- 
versation for royal ears. Although known nowadays 
for her small portraits, she made some of life-size, 
including one of the great Chatham ; and I remember 
a letter from Franklin, to a friend, in the 1780 's, 
about the marriage of a certain Fitzmaurice, who 
had once intended to get Mrs. Wright to make a wax- 
work woman to sit at the head of his table ! 

Richard Watson Gilder was also a native of 
Bordentown, the son of a minister and educator, the 
Gilder home consisting of a new central portion and 
an old-time wing, all painted white, with lilacs and 
rhododendrons growing large and free, and a 
scalloped wooden front fence, and a box-bordered 
path leading to the front door. 

Tom Paine lived in Bordentown for a time; just 
where, is not locally remembered, but it is remem- 
bered that he spent much of his time at an ancient 
inn, still standing, of plastered stone, with a rose-vine 
espaliered on the gable end. 

Here in Bordentown was the home of Francis 
Hopkinson, one of the Signers, and among the most 
prominent of American leaders. The house is still 
standing, to some extent altered from its early ap- 
pearance, but at the same time considerably the 
same. It is at the corner of Park Street and Farns- 

338 



THE THREE B'S OF THE RIVERSIDE 

worth, and is a house of red brick, with a fine 
pent-roof, in a charming curve, above the door. The 
house was occupied and looted by Hessians, and a 
number of Hopkinson's books were carried away. 
One of them was inscribed that it was a gift to Hop- 
kinson from the author, William Smith, Provost of 
the College of Philadelphia; which was shortly to be- 
come the University of Pennsylvania; and this book 
was afterwards recovered and returned, and it was 
found that a Captain Ewald, who had taken it, had 
written on the fly-leaf, in German, that he had had 
the honor of meeting the Provost; and in reference 
to Hopkinson, to whom it was inscribed as a gift, 
Ewald wrote that he was ''one of the greatest 
rebels," but that, "considering his carefully selected 
library, and his mechanical and mathematical in- 
struments, he must also have been a very learned 
man." 

A son of Francis Hopkinson was the Joseph Hop- 
kinson who wrote ''Hail, Columbia!" In the 
"Pennsylvania Chronicle and Universal Adver- 
tiser," of September 5, 1768, was a notice of Francis 
Hopkinson's marriage, and it read: "Bordentown, 
Sept. 3. On Thursday last, Francis Hopkinson, 
Esq., was joined in the Velvet Bonds of Hymen to 
Miss Nancy Borden, of this place, a lady amiable 
both for her internal as well as external accomplish- 
ments." 

It is odd that these three old towns of the River- 
side should still, all of them, be quiet and old- 
fashioned places, of distinctly old-time atmosphere, 

339 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

because a great part of the Delaware Eiver region 
has been taken by mills and factories, that have 
brought hosts of workmen, largely foreign born. I 
came, one day, upon an entire village of Poles, quite 
as foreign in aspect as if it were in Poland, except 
that the Poles had not built Polish houses but ex- 
ceedingly ill-looking American ones, bare and hot 
and machine-made. But the population were all 
Polish, and a Polish funeral was in progress, with 
tables outside the house, covered with white, and a 
priest in full canonicals leading a procession, all 
walking, with candles flaring in the sunlight, and a 
band playing music, and the Stations of the Cross 
standing prominent. Some of the newly-built-up 
regions are rather pleasant and cheerful, but some, 
like this one, are unattractive of aspect. 

But Bristol and Burlington and Bordentown still 
seem American and especially Bordentown. And 
Bordentown is also a town of pleasant amenities, 
from old and young alike. It is set upon a low bluff, 
rising from flats to the southward and from the 
waterside. One finds such old-time American names 
as, just to mention a few at random, Skidpole and 
Rigg and Budd and Bellmere, and some of the streets 
bear sweet personal names, such as Mary and Eliza- 
beth, and others names of families, such as Crosswick 
and Farnsworth. And I do not remember any other 
town with such thriving and permeative growth of 
box, in single plants, in clumps, in hedges. 

Napoleon himself, when he plamied to escape to 
America, put his finger upon the Delaware River, 

340 



THE THREE B'S OF THE RIVERSIDE 

near Bordentown, on a map of this country which 
he had been studying, and declared that it was here 
that he would prefer to make his home, between the 
cities of Philadelphia and New York, and at a point 
where ships with news from France could swiftly 
reach him. It is probable that his brother Joseph 
knew of this. But, at any rate, Joseph, so recently 
a powerful King and brother of the now deposed 
Emperor, fled from France, and reached Philadel- 
phia in 1816, and after a short stay in that city settled 
at Bordento^vn, where he purchased over a thousand 
acres of land at the northern edge of the town, and 
put up a splendid mansion, which he filled with costly 
furniture and works of art: for exile had not im- 
poverished him. The house and its contents were 
burned, in 1820, and he built a second time, as grandly 
as before. But this house has also been destroyed. 
A curious point in regard to the estate is that it is 
not actually upon the river, but upon a long bayou, 
separated from the river by a tongue of land. 

A large house now stands in the park, on prac- 
tically the same building spot that Joseph Bonaparte 
chose. It is a house put up, some years ago, by a 
wealthy Englishman who for a time owned the place ; 
a ^'Croshus for wealth," as I was locally informed; 
and I was also told that the Englishman was ''about 
seven feet high.'* King Joseph is often, I noticed, 
referred to as ''Bony," but not with any desire to be 
disrespectful to his kingly memory; sometimes the 
more formal will refer to him as "Mr. Bonaparte." 
A row of old houses, near the Bonaparte estate, long 

341 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

ago given the name of ''Murat's Eow" — members of 
the Murat family having been among the dwellers 
here — is frankly referred to as ''Mewrat's." 

Great part of the original estate is still held as an 
estate, by the present owner, an American. Here 
and there are ruins, gaunt and bare, of subsidiary 
buildings put up by Bonaparte, in various parts of 
the estate, and these ruins are preserved out of re- 
gard for the memories of the place. Bonaparte built 
a number of such buildings, for friends or for mem- 
bers of his household staff. One such house is still 
standing, a two-story house of buff-colored stuccoed 
stone, with a decidedly French air. 

It is still told that Bonaparte used to be liberal in 
opening his park freely to Bordentown dwellers, and 
that on the big skating places every one was allowed 
to skate, and that he would amuse himself by tossing 
pennies out upon the ice to see them raced for by the 
children, or roll out oranges. 

You notice at once that it is a park of planted trees 
rather than of natural trees. In the still immense 
enclosed park space there are glorious oaks, and 
there are the rare holly trees, and there are two box 
trees that are enormous in size, and there are beeches 
that are feathered to the ground, and there are 
ravines thick-banked with huge and glorious native 
rhododendrons. 

A strange feature of the King Joseph estate is 
the tunnel construction that is still existent; great 
brick-vaulted passages, now mostly in ruin, leading 
from no one can tell precisely where to destinations 

342 



THE THKEE B'S OF THE KIVEESIDE 

similarly not understandable. Perhaps they repre- 
sent some idea that was never fully carried out. 
And they add a touch of mystery to the glamorous 
romance of exiled royalty, and the brilliant throng 
of royalty's friends, here on the banks of the Dela- 
ware. 




343 



CHAPTER XXIII 



ROMANCE IN TOWNS TO THE SOUTHWARD 




jHESTER, ancient place 
that it is, is a town whose 
outwardness of pictur- 
esque glory has welhiigh 
vanished. Nor is it the 
original of the Pennsyl- 
vania ''Old Chester" of 
Margaret Deland ; for the 
home of the fine Doctor 
Lavendar, to which she 
gave that name, is a suburb of Pittsburgh, which was 
never called Chester at all. Chester, the actual Ches- 
ter, and very literally an **old" Chester, is on the 
western bank of the Delaware River, thirteen miles 
from the center of Philadelphia, and, pleasant water- 
side town that it once was, has lost its old-time aspect 
through having become a place of large modern 
manufacturing interests. 

The settlement of this now very modern and smoky 
town was in far-away 1643, while Charles the First 
was still reigning, and the Thirty Years' War had 
not reached its close ; or, to indicate still more plainly 
how very old this supposedly new country of ours 
really is, it may be said that the reign of Louis the 

344 



EOMANCE IN TOWNS TO THE SOUTHWARD 

Fourteenth, which seems so far distant even when 
one is in France, and which the French themselves 
consider a reign of long ago, began in the very year 
that this city of Chester was settled, for in that year 
Louis, a boy of five years old, became king. 

It was the Swedes who first came, carrying out the 
ideas of the great Gustavus Adolphus, dead in the 
decade previous. Upland was the name first given 
to the place, and when Penn landed here, on his first 
journey across the ocean, to take possession of his 
grant of land, he thought somewhat of making Up- 
land his own capital city. But he seems to have pre- 
ferred, on consideration, to have a town entirely his 
own, founded and carried on under his directions, 
rather than to have it said that he had but taken 
up and carried on a settlement of the Swedes. And, 
too, he doubtless deemed the location of his future 
Philadelphia was better for commerce, and for inter- 
course and trading with the north, through its 
being where the river was not so broad but that it 
could readily be crossed, while at the same time it 
was still deep enough for the largest ships : and one 
must needs smile to think of the conception of the 
largest ships, of those days of mercantile and ex- 
plorative expansion, and what would have seemed 
the incredible size of ships of to-day. 

In deciding to give his loving name of Philadel- 
phia to a city of his own dreams, instead of to a settle- 
ment of the Swedes, Penn none the less took away 
the name of Upland, probably to indicate definitely 
that the place was his, and gave it instead the name 

345 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

of Chester, having asked one of the men who crossed 
with him, to suggest a name, and the man, being a 
native of Chester, promptly suggesting the name of 
his home town. 

Almost entirely though the place has lost its 
antique aspect, it still retains, in the very heart of 
its busy business district, a relic of the distant past ; 
it is a building, which although not so old as the 
founding, was put up long ago, for it was built in 
the ninth year of the reign of Louis the Fifteenth, 
while George the First was still King. It is on busy 
Market Street and is a building that instantly at- 
tracts the attention. It presents toward the street 
a quaintly gabled front, heavily corniced and with a 
shingled pent-eave between the first story and the 
extremely low-windowed second story. Above this 
rises a quaint little tower, mounting in three 
diminishing cubes, and topping this is a tiny spire, 
six-sided, with tiny windows at its base. 

It is claimed that this little ancient building has 
the honor of being longer used, continuously, as a 
public building, than any other building in the United 
States. It was at first the court house of Chester 
County, then the court house of Delaware County, 
then the hall of Chester Borough, and since 1866 
it has been the city hall of the city of Chester. It 
has associations with Wayne and with Lafayette, and 
it is odd that it has none with Washington. 

Washington passed frequently through Chester, it 
being on the highway between the northern and 
southern cities, and he stopped here for a short time 

346 



KOMANCE IN TOWNS TO THE SOUTHWARD 

before the Battle of the Brandywine, and for a still 
shorter time after that battle. 

Washington had advanced, this far below Phila- 
delphia, to watch for the coming of the army of Gen- 
eral Howe, that he knew was on the way from New 
York with the intent of capturing Philadelphia. 
And Howe's plan was really an able one. Deciding 
not to follow the obvious approach of the Delaware 
Bay and River, which was at least to some degree 
defended by boats and landward forts and various 
stretched or sunken obstacles, he sailed up without 
opposition to the head of Chesapeake Bay instead 
and, landing without difficulty, prepared to march 
across country. 

Washington, however, although he would have 
preferred to meet an advance from Delaware Bay, 
had not lost sight of the possibility of the advance 
by way of the Chesapeake, and he at once marched 
to meet the British, who were landing at a point due 
west from Chester. And among the hills of that 
region, still a beautiful and sparsely settled country- 
side of hills and trees and streams, with the River 
Brandywine indicating the principal line struggled 
for, the battle was fought. Much of the region is 
still of the same aspect as of long ago. An ancient 
stone house, now almost two centuries old, at Chad's 
Ford, beside which Washington calmly remained, on 
horseback, even after cannon balls began to fall about 
him, is still standing; and still standing, at another 
part of the battlefield, is old Birmingham Meeting- 
House, where, on the day of the battle, it chanced that 

347 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

some meeting was in progress. Suddenly, some dis- 
turbance was noticed at the door, and, disturbance 
not being normal at a Quaker meeting-house, some of 
the men went out and found that news had come of 
the British advance, with the excited addition, im- 
plicitly believed although it was not true, as such 
tales are always believed in time of war, that the in- 
vaders were murdering men and women and children 
indiscriminately. 

In a little while the fields and slopes were glitter- 
ing with British bayonets, and then up came the 
Americans under General Sullivan, in an effort to 
hold the graveyard wall as a key of defense, and some 
of the fiercest of the day's fighting took place here, 
and many of the wounded were carried into the meet- 
ing-house, and it is still told that a number of Ameri- 
can women composedly and steadily carried water to 
the fighters and the wounded in spite of protests as 
to the danger that they were in. 

The Americans were defeated: and Washington 
fell slowly back upon Chester, there wrote a dispatch 
to Congress describing the engagement, and then 
began his preparations for withdrawal to the north- 
ward, leaving Philadelphia to the invaders, rather 
than be hemmed in there by them. 

It may be mentioned, as among the oddities of 
history, that "General Grant" took an imj^ortant 
part in the battle and that ''Governor McKinley" 
was captured as a direct result of it ; McKinley being 
Governor of Delaware, and Grant being the English 
oflScer who, in 1775, had declared, in his place as a 

348 



EOMANCE IN TOWNS TO THE SOUTHWAED 

then member of Parliament, that he could march 
from one end of the American continent to the other 
with five thousand men, as the Americans could not 
fight. 

It was up the road which leads through Chester 
to Philadelphia, from the southward, that CiEsar 
Eodney had come galloping, when his vote was so 
sorely needed for independence; and it was just a 
little below Chester that he galloped across that ex- 
ceedingly curious semi-circular boundary line that 
separates Delaware from Pennsylvania; it having 
been ''on a circle, drawn at twelve miles distance 
from Newcastle, northward and eastward." 

Just across this odd semi-circular boundary, one 
comes to Naaman's, Naaman's-on-Delaware, at 
Naaman's Creek; not thus christened with thought of 
the man of the Bible who favored the waters of 
Damascus, but commemorative of an Indian chief 
whose name was supposed to sound something like 
this. 

An old house stands here, picturesque, and in- 
teresting, and dating far back, and close beside it is 
a block house which is still older. This block house 
was built by the Swedes and was attacked by fiery 
Peter Stuyvesant of New York in his effort to gain 
all this land for the Dutch, before the coming of 
"William Penn. 

Continuing, in a few miles Wilmington is reached, 
a very ancient place, named first in honor of 
Christiana, daughter of Gustavus Adolphus; now a 
busy manufacturing center, but somehow retaining 

349 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

the suggestion of the fine flavor of a fine past, in 
connection with excellent things of the present day. 
There are still some comfortable oldish mansions, 
and there is an unforgettable annual peach market, 
and there is an unusually attractive public park, and 
there is a good hotel, which would be considered 
unusually good even in a much larger city. I men- 
tion this last item because, although in the heart of 
a region of good eating, a region of delicious fish 
and fruit, there used to be hopelessly impossible eat- 
ing offered to the visitor. 

The one notable memorial of the past is Old 
Swedes Church, which was built in 1698 and is be- 
lieved to have been in continuous use as a church 
longer than any other building in the United States. 
In the gable of the church is an old inscription join- 
ing the names of William Penn, and ''that most 
illustrious King of the Swedes, Charles the Eleventh, 
now of glorious memory," and King William of 
England ; not William and Mary, for Mary had died, 
thus ending the joint British rule. There have been 
preserved such odd details, in regard to the building 
of this ancient church, as that the ''sawyers" re- 
ceived six shillings for each one hundred feet, with 
food and lodging free and with the timber ready to 
their hands, and that the glazier, a man for whom 
they sent to Holland, was to have sixteen pence a 
foot for his work, in addition to free board and lodg- 
ing. 

The church, no longer Swedish but known as Holy 
Trinity, is a queerly quaint old structure, with an 

350 



EOMANCE IN TOWNS TO THE SOUTHWARD 

outside stair within a sheltering porch ; it is a stone- 
sided church, entered by fanlight-topped doors 
through a projective square-cornered brick tower, 
which is surmounted by a little open cupola for the 
bell. And the surrounding graveyard is crowded 
thick with graves. 

Eomantic in high degree is the general aspect of 
old Newcastle, but a few miles away. And in spite 
of the fact that Newcastle possesses important manu- 
facturing establishments, and in particular some 
steel works that have such of the very latest devices 
as to make the town notable among mill men, it still 
has much of the notable picturesque. Small though 
Newcastle is, it still possesses so many of the fine 
old-time houses as to give a permeative effect of the 
charming old-time building. There is still profusion 
of beautifully dormered-roofs, there are brick-walled 
box-gardens, there is wealth of clambering ivy and 
wistaria, there are mighty elms and horse-chestnuts, 
there are medleys of red brick, mellowed with age, 
there are gardens thick with greenery and rich with 
the flowering beauty of the crape-myrtle, there are 
delicately dentiled cornices and fine doorways. 

Most important of the homes, although not the 
oldest, is the Read house, down near the water, with 
its front of unusual beauty, its dignified arched door- 
way, its solid paneled shutters, its fine Palladian 
window, fronted by an iron balcony, and a "captain's 
walk" on the top of all — the name so delightfully 
given to the outlook walk, balustraded, which sur- 
mounted many a house along the Atlantic coast in 

351 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

the old days, and from which the owner, a merchant 
or ship owner or retired ship captain, could look out 
over the sea. 

The court house in its elm-alleyed square, with its 
central portion supposed to be over two hundred 
years old, has a dignified front, and regular lines, 
and balustraded roof, and a charming cupola rising 
on slender arcaded supports; this cupola marking 
the mathematical center of the arc, the semi-circle, 
that forms the northern boundary of Delaware. 

Finest of all the memories of this riverside town is 
that of the bequest of William Penn, of a tract of 
adjoining woodland, to furnish firewood for the poor, 
forever; and although the trees long ago vanished, 
as the town expanded, his bequest was not lost, for 
the town authorities established a fund, from the 
lease of the land, to be devoted forever to his pur- 
pose. 

By the time that Newcastle is reached, the Dela- 
ware River has begun to broaden into Delaware Bay; 
and the saddest memory of the long stretch of water, 
reaching on to the Capes, is that of the great number 
of refugees. Loyalists who left their homes when the 
British evacuated Philadelphia and went on board 
the fleet and sailed for New York to begin their 
journey to Halifax; for it was June, and a hot June 
such as only a Delaware River June can sometimes 
show, and a calm fell, so that days and nights of 
sultry heat succeeded each other, and thirteen days 
were passed before the Capes were reached ; the un- 
happy exiles spending the time, as the ships loitered 

352 



EOMANCE IN TOWNS TO THE SOUTHWAED 



and drifted on, in making melancholy social visits 
from ship to ship. 

The northern of the Capes is Cape May ; and here 
there has grown up a great colony of seaside cot- 
tages, with many hotels; it is a seaside resort that 
is principally for the quietly well-to-do, a seaside 
town of piazzas, a town bowered in myriads of 
glorious hydrangeas. And a few miles to the north- 
ward, along the shore, is the thronging, glittering 
gay and noisy Atlantic City, visited annually by hun- 
dreds of thousands from every quarter of the land, 
but in particular tlie great playground and resort for 
Philadelphians ; an ocean-side resort that attracts at 
every season of the year, with those who go in winter 
of a different class from most of those who make it 
their sunmaer visiting place ; a great city has sprung 
up by the sea, with myriad enormous hotels, with 
shop after shop, with buildings for plays and music, 
with a magnificent beach for bathing, with a marvel- 
ous feature, its broad Board Walk, extending for 
miles, and thronged with wheeled chairs and prome- 
naders. 




CHAPTER XXIV 



VALLEY FOBGB 




ALLEY 
FORGE still 
remains, in 
general appear- 
ance, much as it 
was when "Wash- 
ington and his 
army were there. 
The bettering of 
a few roads, the putting up of a few monuments, have 
only slightly altered the aspect; here are still the 
woods and sweeping fields, the slopes and ridges, and 
here and there are still two or three of the old gray 
farmhouses of Revolutionary days. The river still 
flows by in imperturbable serenity ; Valley Creek still 
ripples on past Washington's headquarters, with its 
brook-like message, that men may come and men may 
go but it goes on forever; quite overlooking, in its 
haste past the old gray house, that Washington's 
memory will also go on forever. 

Washington, *'e'en in defeat defeated not,'* delib- 
erately drew off his army after the Battle of German- 
town, which followed that of the Brandywine. The 
British, scarcely sure even that the victory was 

354 



VALLEY FOEGE 

theirs, cautiously watched, without attacking or op- 
posing him. 

Washington held a council of war, and listened to 
advice to hover close and make another attack, and 
other advice to retreat inland to Lancaster, or even 
to the farther side of the Susquehanna and as far as 
York. With grave courtesy Washington listened. 
From the first moments after the Germantown fight, 
however, he seems to have thought of holding a posi- 
tion about Valley Forge, near enough to threaten the 
British in Philadelphia, but at the same time far 
enough away to make an attack upon himself difficult 
and especially from a man of General Howe's slow 
temperament. 

So, after tentatively skirmishing, marching, bend- 
ing here and there, warily offering no chance, hiding 
his plan from all but a few till ready that it should 
be known, he located in the chosen spot on the banks 
of the Schuylkill, less than twenty miles from Phila- 
delphia; this Valley Forge camping ground being a 
space of irregular boundaries, extending a mile and a 
half, in a general way, east and west, and about the 
same north and south. 

It must have seemed curious both to himself and 
to Howe, that Howe had already had part of the 
British army at Valley Forge, but had not kept it 
there! On the northward enveloping sweep after 
Brandywine, Howe had pushed on past Paoli to the 
Schuylkill at Valley Forge, and thence had turned 
back in his hopeful effort to catch Washington 
napping — which, in spite of the vast number of ^' beds 

355 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

in which Washington slept," was a very difficult 
thing to do. 

Howe was always dreaming of catching somebody, 
and wondering why his plans miscarried, not realiz- 
ing, usually admirable and really sagacious as his 
plans were, that he himself was too slow to carry 
them out with success. Had he given his plans to 
General Grey, the victor at Paoli, to follow, the 
thunderbolt dash of that officer might have accom- 
plished something. But, of course, against a man 
like Grey, Washington would not have campaigned 
with the same tactics that he used against Howe. 

At the beginning of the Valley Forge days, when 
the Americans were still shifting and maneuvering, 
news was carried to Howe, by a spy who had unusual 
means of gaining knowledge, that the young French- 
man, Lafayette, by whom the Americans set such 
store, was going to march to an exposed new posi- 
tion with 2500 of the best men of the American army. 
Howe was beside himself with joy. Every detail of 
the intended march and position was put before him. 
He would undoubtedly have Lafayette in his hands ! 
So absolutely sure of it was he that he committed the 
almost incredible folly of inviting a number of the 
ladies of Philadelphia, social leaders with whom the 
British officers had promptly established social rela- 
tions, to meet the gallant French nobleman of whom 
they had been hearing so much, and who was so 
shortly to be in Philadelphia! And he actually had 
a ship ready in which to send Lafayette to England 
in triumph. 

356 



VALLEY FOEGE 

His plan almost succeeded. But the American 
scout service was remarkably efficient, and Lafayette 
himself displayed cool-headed resource, and the 
ladies of Philadelphia were disappointed — or at least 
General Howe was. 

The story of that winter at Valley Forge is a story 
of dreadful hardships borne with unconquerable 
spirit. The American army numbered 11,000 men 
when December of 1777 saw them definitely estab- 
lished. The British, in Philadelphia, had 19,500. 
But Howe never attacked, though from time to time 
he made reconnaissances in considerable force, only 
to find the Americans alert and ready. 

The Americans so watched the roads and the city 
as not only to check materially the British scouts, but 
also to interfere with the carrying into the city of 
food for the British army and for the inliabitants ; 
severely punishing by whipping, or even now and 
then by hanging, farmers who disobeyed absolute 
orders and persisted in trying to help the British 
and get real gold, instead of helping the Americans 
and getting for their food only the rapidly depreciat- 
ing Continental currency. This cutting off of land- 
ward supplies was matter of great concern and im- 
portance to Howe. And Washington well under- 
stood, what has been almost looked on as not hav- 
ing been discovered until our contest with Germany, 
the practical value of food in helping to win the war. 

The encampment at Valley Forge was defended on 
the east and south by a ditch — portions of the 
original still remaining and other parts restored — 

357 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

six feet wide by three feet deep, with the mound- 
ing up of the earth making a height of four feet: 
materially different from the trenches of to-day! 
On the west, farther from Philadelphia, no attack 
could be made by way of the steep-banked creek 
valley in the face of Washington's infallible scout 
service and the fatal exposing of the British flank 
which would be entailed. To the north was the 
Schuylkill River ; a defense amply sufficient. 

The probability, but by no means the certainty, was 
that Howe could have captured Valley Forge by a 
front attack in force. But his own loss would have 
been huge, and he remembered Bunker Hill, he re- 
membered the British retreat from Concord. Had 
he returned to Philadelphia, after either a victory or 
a defeat, his march would have been harassed at 
every step. And even to capture Valley Forge would 
not have amounted to much, for the Americans would 
have fallen back before him and it would have been 
fatal to have carried pursuit far. There had even 
been a bridge built by the Americans across the 
Schuylkill ; and the soldiers were very proud of that 
bridge, for on each arch was some favorite general's 
name and on the central arch that of Washington. 
The bridge itself has long since gone, but its location 
is still pointed out. 

It was a winter of suffering. There was desperate 
shortage of food and clothes, even of shoes. It was 
a winter of bitter cold, of freezing, starving and 
dying. 

Two officers were sent to explain the situation to 

358 



VALLEY FOEGE 

Congress; official reports, so it was supposed, not 
having sufficiently stirred the members: though the 
fact was that Congress, during that gloomy winter, 
was almost at the end of its resources. 

General Knox and Captain Sargent were chosen 
by their comrades as a committee to visit Congress 
— it was not an act warmly approved by General 
Washington, but he permitted it — and the general 
and the captain dressed with care to do honor to the 
nation's representatives. But it so happened that 
Knox was of a girth that only long-continued starva- 
tion could even begin to subdue and that Sargent was 
so particular a dresser as to be almost a military 
dandy : and so, when the two reached Congress, and 
told their heartbreaking tale of suffering, one of the 
members dryly remarked that although he had for 
some time been hearing stories of want and of naked- 
ness in the army, he had never seen a fatter man than 
the one who had just spoken nor a better dressed 
man than the other! 

An admirable conception is materializing here at 
Valley Forge ; a conception of something to stand for 
centuries; a Washington Memorial. It will consist, 
when completed, of a combined group, including 
tower and hall and chapel and a Cloister of the 
Colonies; the chapel having been built, and the 
cloister being well under way. In all, the grouped 
Memorial will be imposing in plan and size. 

The monuments here and there, at different points, 
at Valley Forge, add to the effect of the general scene 
without destroying naturalness of aspect ; and among 

359 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

others the Pennsylvanian Muhlenberg is honored, the 
clergyman who, at the conclusion of his sermon, had 
declared that there was a time to keep peace and a 
time to fight and that this was the time to fight, 
stripping off his cassock as he spoke and appearing 
before his congregation in the uniform of an Ameri- 
can ofiScer. And near by is a monument to that still 
greater Pennsylvanian, Wayne. And for such as do 
not find here a monument to their favorite general, 
there is, on a commanding spot, a National Memorial 
Arch which, standing nobly for all, may remind us 
that all were in essence equal, and that the humblest 
men who devotedly gave their lives gave as much as 
any officer could give, and without the uplifting hope 
of fame. 

The old house still stands which "Washington, as 
commander, made his headquarters. It was the 
home of the owner of the forge that gave the creek 
valley its name ; such old forge-masters ' homes being 
a feature of quiet little Pennsylvania vallej^s. It is 
a good-looking house, although neither large nor 
elaborate; built with paneled simplicity, with old- 
fashioned fireplaces, and with window-seats whose 
tops lift up and within which — an interesting human 
touch — Washington kept his papers! The many- 
paned windows are wooden shuttered, the cornicing 
is heavy, there is a round window in the gable, there 
is a little pent-roof over the door; it is one of those 
admirably unpretentious houses that were built in 
that happy period when everybody unconsciously 
built right: as conversely there have been times not 

360 



VALLEY FOEGE 

so felicitous; sucli being among the most curious of 
points concerning social development. 

To see Valley Forge at any time gives one a pro- 
found thrill. ''Here the old Continentals, in their 
ragged regimentals ' ' bore incredible hardships in the 
hope that we, their successors, might live under a 
free government. And it adds immensely to the 
vividness of a visit to Valley Forge to choose a 
special day. 

Years ago, before the chapel of the "Washington 
Memorial was even begun, but after it had been 
planned, I was there on an autumn day when, with 
all their banners gayly spread, members of a society 
of Colonial Wars marched from the station to the 
chosen chapel site, carrying aloft, among them, 
fluttering flags that bore the insignia of the original 
Thirteen Colonies. No American could see such a 
simple bugle-led march, or be one in such a march, 
along the bending woodland road, amid the glorious 
fall colors, through a piece of land rich in tremendous 
memories, without being deeply moved. 

But I have had a still more thrilling experience. I 
went there on last Washington's Birthday, for I 
wanted to see Valley Forge as nearly as possible as 
it was on February 22, 1778. 

The day was wretched and cold. A dismal snow, 
raw and wet, was falling. Wet snow lay deep in the 
fields and among the gaunt bare trees. The only 
visitors besides myself, were two companies of uni- 
formed Boy Scouts. When I walked off into the 
loneliness, it was loneliness, indeed, except for the 

361 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

omnipresent spirit of the past : and the snow began to 
swirl and drive, with slow dismalness, and at times 
it was so thick that I could scarcely see for the dis- 
tance of a stone 's-throw, and then the air would 
lighten and brighten a little and I could once more see 
distant slopes. 

The Boy Scouts, eager to see everything and go 
everywhere, had divided into a number of little par- 
ties, and from time to time, out of the snow misti- 
ness, now from this direction and now from that, 
there came the sound of drum and bugle: and from 
time to time, out from some thick clump of bare trees 
or from some mass of evergreens, or, suddenly 
emergent, breasting the crest of a hill or leaping a 
stone wall, or walking steadily along some road, were 
the Boy Scouts, repeopling as with ghosts, in the 
snow storm, the fields and the hillsides. And at noon 
they built outdoor fires, and there they cooked their 
mid-day meal, and seeing them from a little distance 
the picture and the impression were well-nigh com- 
plete. 

Then again the lonely fields of snow and the silent 
solemnity: and the sinister crows flapped slowly by 
in twos and threes; and now and then the dismal 
wind gave a curious moaning sound among the ever- 
greens, and I thought, for it was a day for impres- 
sions, of the moaning cry that used to sweep across 
these fields, taken up dolefully by company after 
company of hungry men, ''Bread, bread, bread!" — 
And it was a relief to see again the Scouts and their 
campfires. 

362 



VALLEY FORGE 

It is a curious fact that within the limits of Penn- 
sylvania there should be both Valley Forge and 
Gettysburg, each marking the most vital point in a 
war for national existence, and it would be strange, 
but by no means incredible, if Pennsylvania, the Key- 
stone State, should in some way, now unsuspected, be 
again vitally tested, to show that the keystone of our 
national arch still holds the arch unbreakable. 

Somehow, by bravery, self-sacrifice, endurance, the 
dreadful winter at Valley Forge passed. Spring ap- 
proached, and the men became cheerful, hopeful, 
almost happy. The Orderly Book of the army, for 
the weeks and weeks of that dreadful winter, is 
crowded with advice and orders regarding behavior, 
health and sanitation, and on April 8 comes an order 
which summarizes an easier atmosphere. Frankly, 
it has become warm enough for the men to wash their 
faces! and therefore, 

**Want of uniformity in the Soldiers Cloathing, 
and its indifferent quality, so far from excusing 
slovenliness, and unsoldierly neglect in other re- 
spects, ought rather to excite each man to Compen- 
sate those blemishes by redoubled attention, to the 
means which he had in his power. For instance ; the 
Soldier may always shave his Beard, appear with 
clean hands & face, and in general, have an air of 
Neatness, which will be auspicious under all dis- 
advantages." 

And it interested me to find, in that Orderly Book, 
that when the engineers are mentioned, it is as 
*4ngenieurs." 

363 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

At different times after the close of the war "Wash- 
ington visited various places connected with his 
hattles and campaigns, and not alone the places which 
had witnessed his successes. He revisited Fort 
Washington on the Hudson. He even made his home 
in Germantown, looking out on the street up which 
his grimly resisting troops were driven. But it has 
been supposed that he never went back again to 
Valley Forge, its memories being so poignant, so full 
of crushing sadness. 

Yet a story has drifted down, of a Virginia farmer 
who through some freak of fortune found himself 
living on a farm at Valley Forge. On a sunny after- 
noon, while plowing, not far from the headquarters 
of Lord Stirling (that picturesque claimant of a 
peerage who was one of Washington's personal 
friends), the farmer saw a dignified man, mounted on 
a big horse, riding slowly toward him, followed by a 
black servant. 

The dignified man stopped his horse, and, as he 
looked gravely around, asked the farmer a few ques- 
tions about soil and crops and markets; and this, to 
me, marks the story as not improbable, for Washing- 
ton, keen farmer that he personally was and con- 
versant with every detail of his own great estate, 
was always and everywhere eager to learn in regard 
to farming methods and results. 

So the grave man on horseback, dressed gravely 
in dark clothes and speaking with such slow deliber- 
ateness, was interested in the aspect of the fields. 

**But I don't know so much about this country yet, 

364 



VALLEY FORGE 

for I am from Virginia,'' said the farmer at length. 
At which the face of the grave man on horseback 
brightened: *'I also am from Virginia," he said: 
**I am General Washington." 




365 



CHAPTER XXV 



AS FAE AS YORK AND LANCASTER 




UDYAED KIPLING has pic- 
tured the country out toward 
Lancaster, but with an odd 
confusion in his mind of 
the Quakers and the "Penn- 
sylvania Dutch." ''It's a 
kindly, softly country there," he 
writes; ''back of Philadelphia 
among the German towns, Lan- 
caster way. Little houses and 
bursting big barns, fat cattle, fat 
women, and all as peaceful as 
Heaven might be if they farmed there." 

But the "Pennsylvania Dutch" country is neither 
kindly nor softly, but gives an impression, on the 
contrary, of extreme hardness, both in houses and 
people. And the term, "small houses" fits neither 
"Pennsylvania Dutch" nor Quakers. 

Toll gates, on the principal highways, are now 
done away with or soon to be: but I well remember 
the general type of toll-gate keeper: neither kindly 
nor softly, she, and apt to be wiry and leanish, rather 
than fat. I say "she" because the type used to be 
female, rather than male; and with a caution which 

366 



AS FAE AS YORK AND LANCASTER 

indicated imliappy experiences with human nature, 
the toll bars used to be not only down but padlocked 
down, nor was the grudging key turned till the toll 
was actually in hand. As the gates were only a mile 
or so apart, especially in the district southward from 
York, the pleasures of motoring may be imagined. 

But the general countryside, out "Lancaster 
way," to use the Kipling expression, is exceed- 
ingly prosperous ; and after you have noted the evi- 
dences of good farming on every side you are pre- 
pared for the local claim, backed by the official re- 
ports of the Department of Agriculture, at Wash- 
ington, that Lancaster County is almost the best in 
the entire United States for farming prosperity. 
After that, you look with new interest at the big 
houses and the well-tilled farms. 

The people who formed and still form the mass 
of the population came mostly from the Lower 
Palatine country, and they not only came in large 
masses, but settled in large masses, giving a general 
"Pennsylvania Dutch" character to the important 
region west of Philadelphia, covering in a general 
way the counties of which Lancaster and Reading 
and York are the principal cities. The people who 
mainly settled that region have never affiliated with 
Philadelphia, nor have they sent their own people 
to the westward. They have, by a certain massed 
stolidity and solidity, tended to keep Philadelphia 
within its own borders, and have thus had a power- 
ful influence in aiding the natural Philadelphia 
tendency to what may be termed insularity. 

367 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

At the same time, this region has produced some 
notable people, as if to show what it could have done 
had it been occupied by an assimilative population, 
instead of by a race who have for a hundred and fifty 
years kept so to themselves and lived so among them- 
selves that even now their language is largely a 
patois, composed in considerable degree of mono- 
syllabic gutturals, and where the single word 
**Ain'tr* pronounced with nasal intake, serves not 
infrequently for the total of conversation. It is 
astonishing, and it is amusing, how much can be 
nasally expressed by that one word. 

In spite of schools, the people pay, naturally, less 
attention to rules of speech and grammar than do 
most communities, and they can be amusing without 
intending to be ; as, two youths who were one morn- 
ing comparing notes about motor-cars, on the main 
highway through Pennsylvania from east to west 
leading through Lancaster. *'Gee, there's Connect- 
icut!" exclaimed one, impressed; to which the other, 
with superior scorn, ''That ain't nothin': I seen a 
car from Texas this mornin' already yet!" 

A recent Governor of the State loved to tell of a 
personal experience with ''Pennsylvania Dutch" 
speech. Calling at one of the houses, there was no 
response to repeated gubernatorial pulls at the door- 
bell. But at length the housewife happened casually 
to come around the corner of the house. "Oh," she 
said, "did you bell? It didn't make!" 

That the people retain the religion that their 
ancestors brought to America in pre-Revolutionary 

368 



AS FAR AS YORK AND LANCASTER 

days, and are Mennonites, has aided materially in 
keeping them together and in holding them away 
from the rest of the State. And at the street 
markets in their central city of Lancaster may still 
be seen the poke bonnets and the primly character- 
istic types of dress that, like their religion, aid in 
keeping them a people apart. And at these de- 
cidedly pictorial markets, the fact that you see 
market women standing beside their own trays and 
baskets is no indication of their being financially 
humble, for the family wealth may represent many 
thousands of dollars. Motor-cars are locally in- 
creasing, for practical use and not for pleasure — 
pleasure figuring but slightly in the Mennonite ideas 
of life! — and Lancaster County has more motor cars 
in proportion to its population than has the city of 
Philadelphia. But the people travel about very 
little, and seldom get even so far as the city of 
William Penn. At a recent county fair— it was in 
1913 — a special reward was given for the best corn 
grown by youths under twenty-one: each of the 
winners was given a trip to Washington, with all ex- 
penses paid, to see the public buildings and the 
President ; and of the twelve who won and went, not 
one had ever before been outside of the limits of 
Lancaster County and for at least one it was the very 
first ride on a railroad, for even the shortest pos- 
sible distance. 

But, as if to show what the general region could 
have drtne had it been more assimilative, and not so 
dominated in spirit by the men of the Palatinate, it 

369 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

is well to remember that James Buchanan, the only- 
President of the United States that Pennsylvania has 
furnished, was a Lancaster County man: not born 
there, but in the county out beyond Gettysburg, 
where far back in the 1780 's his Irish father settled, 
coming across the ocean to this new land, and where 
the future President lived till his early manhood, 
when he became a Lancastrian. Fulton, successful 
inventor of the steamboat, was born in Lancaster 
County. The Murrays, parents of Lindley, were 
Lancastrians, and Lindley himself was born there. 
And the mighty '*Thad'' Stevens, of Civil War days, 
was a Lancastrian. 

Farther on, crossing the Susquehanna at sleepy, 
picturesque Columbia, known in the old ferry days 
as Wright's Crossing, with much of old-time lore as 
to the early pack-trains and settlers, we get to 
ancient York, which now seems far away from 
Philadelphia, for somehow the crossing of the 
Susquehanna gives curiously that impression. York 
was a well-known town in Eevolutionary days, and 
for quite a while the American Congress held its 
meetings there when Philadelphia was held by the 
British. But the building where Congress met was 
long ago destroyed. As in Lancaster County, there 
is a generally permeative effect of brick houses, and 
of gardens and farms and people of foreign aspect. 
And, as if to offset the Palatine and Mennonite ideas, 
the very thought of York and Lancaster in juxta- 
position brings up thoughts of roses and of England ! 

In the vicinity of Lancaster and the Mennonites, 

370 



AS FAR AS YORK AND LANCASTER 

another ancient sect, that of the Dunkers, established 
itself in the long ago, and traces still exist, for there 
are still Dunkers who dress and live according to 
old-fashioned forms. 

What seems to have been an offshoot from the 
Dunkers was the Order of the Solitary ; and although 
this order has disappeared, it has left two great 
quaint buildings as memorials of its very strange 
existence. For it was an order of Protestant monks 
and nuns, and at Ephrata, twenty miles north of 
Lancaster, buildings that are still standing were put 
up a century and a half ago ; huge wooden buildings, 
broad of front and broad of gable ; with two stories 
and half a dozen windows in each gable, which runs 
up sharply to its point. The buildings are curiously 
un-American in look, and the oddness of effect is 
largely increased by the smallness of their many 
windows. 

The interior is still more extraordinary, low- 
ceilinged, heavy-beamed, raising thoughts of the 
plastered and timbered monasteries of Switzerland; 
and that the mode of life was of much severity, as 
tradition tells, is evident from the cells of the in- 
mates, for these cells are each but twenty inches 
wide, and a narrow bench, with pillow literally of 
wood, was the provision for sleeping, and the con- 
necting corridors are so narrow that two persons 
can barely pass. That the men and the women, oc- 
cupying separate houses, lived lives of celibacy, and 
ate from wooden plates and drank from wooden cups, 
can readily be believed. These old community build- 

371 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

ings, still standing here, are among the most curious 
mementoes of the past in America. 

Near Ephrata is Lititz, a town established by an- 
other of the numerous distinctive sects, of foreign 
origin, that chose Pennsylvania as an abiding place. 
Lititz, well over a century and a half old, w^as set- 
tled by the Moravians, and is still essentially a 
Moravian town, a peaceful, quiet place, with an air 
of scholastic seclusion, with academy buildings and 
shady quadrangles, and with its ancient spring still 
offering its healing water as of old. 

The Moravians have never been in the least a queer 
or morose or self-centered sect; they have not been 
a people who have set themselves apart, but have 
always been a cheerful-minded folk, welcoming the 
cultivated things of life, and welcoming, too, the sad- 
dened and the unhappy. And here, to Lititz, came 
that Baden-bom Sutter who, after wandering over 
a great part of the world and serving in various 
armies, settled in California, under Mexican control, 
and amazedly found himself owner of the stream and 
the mill where California gold was first discovered. 
He deemed himself the possessor of untold wealth, 
but his title, when California was transferred to the 
United States, was declared not valid, and appeals 
to courts and to Congress, year after year for many 
years, were in vain. He went to Lititz for the waters 
of its spring ; he liked the quiet people and the quiet 
people liked him; and when he died in Washington, 
in 1880, many years after the discovery of gold was 
almost forgotten, but while still struggling for Con- 

372 



AS FAR AS YOEK AND LANCASTER 

gressional redress, his body was taken back to Lititz 
and was buried in the Moravian cemetery there. 

The principal settlement of the Moravians was 
made at a place which they named Bethlehem, on the 
Lehigh River ; and here there are a number of peace- 
ful old buildings, put up before the Revolution, still 
standing; one, in particular, of gray stone, built 
around a courtyard, and surmounted by a charming 
little bell-tower. Music is an important feature of 
Moravian life, and the Moravians of Bethlehem have 
in this respect attracted the widespread attention of 
music lovers. 

The Easter morning services are beautiful and 
striking, for, long before sunrise, trombone players 
go from point to point in the town, awaking the 
people with their playing, and the players gather 
within the turret of the plain old Moravian church 
and play ancient chorals, and, in the darkness, 
gradually the people assemble in the church, and 
there is a fine and simple service, and then, led by 
trombone players and choir and bishop, all march 
slowly from the church to the ancient burying-ground 
on the hill, and a hollow square is formed, and there 
is the briefest of services; and gradually the dawn 
has been coming, and the thin pale light of early 
morn has been brightening, and the moment the 
services at the burying ground are completed the sun, 
as if awaiting that moment, rises into view on the 
distant horizon. 

Longfellow wrote of the nuns of Bethlehem giving 
a banner to the romantic Polish soldier, Pulaski: 

373 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

some verses exceedingly full of misinformation re- 
garding the Moravians; for there were no **nuns of 
Bethlehem/' and no ** swinging censors burning," 
and no **faint light on the cowled head," and such 
imaginings. 

The building is stiU standing in which Lafayette, 
when wounded, was nursed back to health ; he having 
been wounded at Brandywine, and, remaining on 
horseback for hours directing his troops, in spite of 
his wound, was finally compelled to give up and was 
taken to Philadelphia and thence to Bristol. At 
Bristol he was come upon by Henry Laurens, 
successor of John Hancock as President of the Con- 
tinental Congress. Laurens was on his way to York 
in Pennsylvania, and had Lafayette carried with him 
as far as Bethlehem and there left him in charge of 
the Moravian Sisters, who gave him every possible 
care. 

So warmly did Lafayette appreciate the personal 
care of Laurens, that he wrote fully of it to his wife 
and it deeply impressed her. Laurens himself was 
afterwards, when on his way to Holland as Minister, 
captured by the British and taken to London (I re- 
member stopping at an old and pleasant inn, at 
Salisbury in England, where they proudly told that 
the building had been honored by the presence of 
Charles Dickens, who did some of his writing there, 
and by that of Henry Laurens, an American, who 
spent a night there on his way to London ; they for- 
getting or not considering as of importance the fact 
that Laurens was a prisoner, but just feeling proud 

374 



AS FAR AS YORK AND LANCASTER 

that a distinguished American was there!); and in 
London he was put into the Tower; and the wife 
of Lafayette at once wrote urgently to Vergennes, 
begging him to use all the influence of the French 
Court to have Laurens restored to liberty. But 
Laurens was not released nntil General Washington 
was able to give Lord Cornwallis for him in ex- 
change ! 



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W\-^ 



iM;Mmlmf$} 



s^ 



S75 



CHAPTER XXVI 



SOME BENEFACTIONS, OLD AND NEW 




ENJAMIN WEST, when 
asked to make a donation 
for the benefit of the Penn- 
sylvania Hospital, of his 
home city of Philadelphia, 
promptly replied that he 
had no money to spare but 
would gladly paint a picture 
and give it. He was at that 
time an honored and popular painter in London, but 
he devoted himself to the making of a painting large 
in size and fine in design, a painting of ' * Christ Heal- 
ing the Sick,'* with over one hundred figures in it. 
Then there arose an amusing difficulty. His English 
admirers ofiPered him three thousand guineas for the 
painting, for a British gallery! At which West, 
considering that he really could not afford to do 
otherwise, sold it, but made a replica for America; 
and that replica, when it arrived, was exhibited to the 
public and, in paid admissions, earned four thousand 
pounds for the Pennsylvania Hospital in the first 
year! 

The painting hangs in what is now used as the 
entrance hall of the hospital, in tawny beauty, with 

376 



SOME BENEFACTIONS, OLD AND NEW 

soft-hned pink and blue and grayish-white; the 
figures are life-size and are admirably grouped, and 
one sees why it was that Benjamin West attained 
his eminence. 

It was over a century and a half ago that this still- 
existent hospital was founded, and it has a noble 
record of accomplished good. It was started upon 
its existence by Benjamin Franklin, as was so much 
that is old and excellent and possessed of the secret 
of life; and the oldest of the buildings was put up 
*'In the year of Christ, MDCCLV, George the 
Second happily reigning,'^ as may still be read on 
the cornerstone, the inscription having been com- 
posed by Franklin, and continuing with the state- 
ment that the hospital was ''piously founded for the 
relief of the sick and the miserable." 

Individuals freely gave money for it; Whitefield 
sent a considerable sum; the British Parliament 
turned over to it some funds unclaimed by a land 
company. In 1759 some playersi gave *' Hamlet" 
for the benefit of the hospital; which was deemed 
quite shocking, plays not having received the ap- 
proval of the ''best people"; but it was decided that 
the hospital charter gave no right to refuse money 
and so the condemned "Hamlet" enriched the 
treasui-y by precisely forty-seven pounds, two shill- 
ings and sixpence. 

The hospital began in a quite businesslike way, 
the managers being fined for absence from meetings 
or lateness, the "towue clock" or the watch of the 
oldest member present being the standard of time; 

377 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

such being the reverence for age, in Philadelphia. 
Had it been New York it would not have been the 
watch of the oldest director but of the richest; if in 
Chicago, not the oldest but the youngest. 

At one time, in early days, a charge of eight cents 
was made for the privilege of walking through the 
orazy ward, and many availed themselves of the 
privilege of enjoying such a delightful amusement. 

The hospital is large, and nobly beautiful. It 
faces on Pine Street, between Eighth and Ninth. 
The broad central structure is of umber brick, freely 
faced with dull gray marble with six white marble 
pilasters, Corinthian topped, supporting the cornice, 
beneath a pointed pediment, in the center of which 
is a window longitudinally oval. Surmounting all 
is a low superstructure, of white-painted wood, with 
huge round balustered top. There are lon^ and 
stately balanced wings, each dormered and each with 
an octagon tower ; the center and wings of this main 
part of the hospital extending for a frontage of two 
hundred and seventy-six feet. 

The broad pleasance in front of the building, with 
its queer little lead statue of William Penn, the gift 
of John Penn, of '* Solitude," is enclosed within a 
high-topped brick wall and a stretch of iron fencing 
which stands on a base of marble-topped brick; and 
an ancient wistaria goes clambering over rail and 
wall and buttonwood free and gateway: and through 
the special wistaria gateway, such is the proud 
declaration, no visitor has entered since the Marquis 
de Lafayette! But when General Joffre came to 

378 



SOME BENEFACTIONS, OLD AND NEW 

Philadelphia, in the course of his journey through 
the United States after the Marne, arrangements 
were made for his honored reception, at the old 
building, and he was to be admitted through the 
Lafayette gate — but alas ! not understanding the im- 
portance of it, his engagements were so many that he 
could not come! 

The main entrance (not used, however, as a side 
entrance is used instead) is of unusual dignity; up 
some balustraded steps of stone, through a fan- 
lighted doorway, into a hall rich in pillars and 
pilasters and leading back to a remarkable stairway, 
widespreading in its double upward sweep, and ris- 
ing, in ramp after ramp, in open airy charm, to the 
third floor : a wonderful old stair in a building which 
is one of the most excellent memorials of the past, 
in its architecture and in its record of good deeds 
done. 

Philadelphia is a wealthy city, but has never had 
the reputation of being a city of ''predatory 
wealth," and this may explain why it stands high 
as a city of benefactions. I shall not mention the 
greater part of them, for the greater part are like 
the charities, both organized and unorganized, of 
other cities. But she has also charities and benefac- 
tions that are unusual, or unusually administered. 

The huge Stephen Girard fortune, left by him 
principally for the maintenance of his College, with 
its more than fifteen hundred pupils, who are fed 
and clothed and sheltered and taught, but also to 
carry out public spirited ideas, as well, for the benefit 

379 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

of the city, involves the building of dwelling houses, 
with improvement of the waterfront, and the 
management of coal mines. Over four hundred and 
ninety dwelling houses have been erected in South 
Philadelphia under the provisions of the Girard 
trust fund, and they are all furnished with heat and 
light and hot water from a central heating plant 
operated by the trustees. More than seventy 
million tons of coal have been mined on coal prop- 
erty managed by the estate, since the death of 
Stephen Girard. 

Girard left his money wisely, under wise directions 
for the meeting of changing conditions. But in too 
many cases a millionaire, after spending his life and 
his utmost brain power in heaping up a fortune, 
merely throws it away by some carelessly planned 
charity. 

A dozen or so years ago a rich Philadelphian lay 
dying. To one or two of his close friends he had 
spoken of a scheme of rivaling, for girls, the splendid 
endowment of Stephen Girard for boys. He died; 
and it was found that he had not left so much as had 
been anticipated for the rival to Girard, but that he 
had done a great deal, for half a million was set down 
for land and buildings for a home for the dependent 
orphan daughters of Masons. But he had put the 
matter off for so many years that he died within 
thirty days of signing, thus making the bequest in- 
operative under state law. Careless enough, that; 
but his immediate heirs decided to carry out his wish 
as if he had legally expressed it, and beautiful build- 

380 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

ings were put up and the doors were thrown open 
for the reception of the dependent orphan daughters. 

However, there seemed to be none, Masons as a 
class not leaving dependent orphan daughters, as the 
astute financier could, with little trouble, have 
learned. From time to time, within a few years, 
a girl was found ; and then it was decided to include 
dependent widows of Masons. More time passed; 
and it was at length decided that it need not be abso- 
lutely necessary that the beneficiaries be connected 
with Masons at all. And, though much good will 
continue to be done under the bequest, it will not be 
quite along the lines intended. 

The great success of the Girard beneficence stimu- 
lated, a few years ago, another rich man to imita- 
tion. He willed that, after the death of his wife, 
his fortune should go for the founding and upkeep 
of a school and home for Pennsylvania girls, who 
should merely be poor and white and healthy, and 
have neither father nor mother living. Other mil- 
lions were to go for maintenance. The man died 
and was gathered to his fathers; whereupon it was 
pointed out that the dependent white orphan girl 
has, at least in a few of the Eastern States, become 
as extinct as the dodo — needy orphan girls being 
amply cared for by agencies already existent; and 
the courts were asked to break the will on the ground 
that its provisions were such as could not be carried 
out; the whole thing becoming thus a muddle be- 
cause of the futility of good intentions without care- 
ful investigation and planning, nothing being certain 

381 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

except that the millions would not be used as their 
owner intended. 

There used to be an admirable charity which I fear 
has been abandoned: the giving, without charge, to 
poor men, shaving soap and the use of razors. 
There is a fund, established over a century ago, in 
1816, with an invested capital of almost one hundred 
thousand dollars, whose income is to '*be laid out in 
premiums" to be distributed *' among ingenious men 
and women who make useful inventions . . . and 
along with which shall be given a copper medal": 
a notable bequest in that it included women among 
possible inventors, although it was made in a time 
when women were not greatly considered in such 
matters. 

Three quarters of a century ago a fund was left 
by will, in regard to which the testator, with bizarre 
ingenuity, specified that the beneficiaries were to be 
widows — ''white and respectable and American- 
born" — whose husbands had died within one small 
specified section of the city, Southwark! The 
testator never stopped to think that his little fortune 
of eight thousand dollars or so might grow, as it 
has, to nearly two hundred thousand. With his few 
thousands he was as careless and as dictatorial as 
others are with their millions, and even specified 
what form his beneficence should take — that of fuel. 
If it had not been that, in being so pharisaically eager 
to do good only for the ** respectable," he forgot 
altogether to say ''needy," those who are carrying 
out the old will might find few objects to benefit by 

382 



SOME BENEFACTIONS, OLD AND NEW 

it, hampered as it is by sucli provisions, including 
the absurd one that the necessary husband shall have 
died within the limits of Southwark. One is tempted 
at times to say that the old adage needs altering to 
** Where there's a will there's a waste." 

There are two associations whose aim is to assist, 
unostentatiously and tactfully, business men who 
have met with misfortune or whose affairs have be- 
come complicated. One of these associations has a 
considerable fund, established many years ago, and 
still added to from time to time by thoughtful 
testators. A once-wealthy merchant, dying, still 
fairly rich, at the age of ninety, left his estate to his 
only child, an unmarried daughter of nearly seventy, 
and the daughter turned over the entire estate to the 
association, which in turn assumed her comfortable 
care and maintenance as well as the care of the estate 
which she was helpless to manage. 

Charitable help is given, in general, so kindly and 
tactfully in this city that it is even more amazing 
than it would be in other places to find that a woman 
of wealth who is given great credit for her devotion 
to charity, loves to sit in self-satisfied vanity, halt- 
ing poor applicants as they approach her throne and, 
as they stand humble and abashed, shaming and 
mortifying them by spraying them thoroughly with 
an atomizer. ^'Charity doth not behave itself un- 
seemly," remarked Saint Paul, as if anticipating 
something of this sort. 

One of the most sunny-minded benefactions in the 
whole country is that of the well-known Philadelphia 

383 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

music publisher who left his fortune to found a 
pleasant home for all music teachers who may need 
a haven for their old age: — thus all those that he 
had known, who had used his music and come in his 
store, may enjoy a heritage from him, as well as 
many another to follow. 

The Octavia Hill Association seems to have been 
wisely planned for the carrying out of admirable 
plans, devoting itself to the purchase of insanitary 
rookeries and their redemption into excellent and liv- 
able homes, and the renting of them at reasonable 
rates ; and it seems to be doing excellent constructive 
work. 

Among the vast number and variety of Philadel- 
phia benefactions, I have been especially impressed 
by the picturesque character of at least a few, and 
perhaps more than a few, that are carried on in old- 
time homes left by the testators, in the midst of the 
old-time furniture and household belongings. 

There comes in particular the memory of a build- 
ing, gloomy and gothic, standing in a wild, grassy 
park thick with gloomy evergreens. Little orphans, 
some eighty or a hundred of them, sit at long 
mahogany Empire banqueting tables. The side- 
board is carved with four bearded Egyptian 
caryatids; and the little orphan who had been de- 
puted as house-guide wondered if they represented 
Abraham LincoLn! 

On state occasions the table is set with great silver- 
branched candlesticks, with silver salvers and 
pierced open-work sugar-baskets ; a veritable wagon- 

384 



SOME BENEFACTIONS, OLD AND NEW 

load of such treasure being kept in a great vault 
hidden within the stone wall of the house, a hiding- 
place as large as a room and stacked and piled with 
the rare old silver left by the founder to her school. 
Little orphans dust antique girandoles, dangling 
with cut pendants. There are exquisite Heppelwhite 
sofas, slender, frail, fine, bleaching in the sunshine 
of long school corridors. There are phalanxes of 
Louis Seize chairs and fascinating sets of old china. 
And it seems like a fantastic dream. 




385 




CHAPTER XXVII 

SOUTH OF MAHKET STEEET 

HE PhiladelpMan is a man 
of the habitual. Before he 
is born it is known from 
among which small group 
of possible doctors must be 
chosen the one who is to usher him 
into the world, in which, from the 
very circumstance of his exist- 
ence, he is to bear such an impor- 
tant part ; even the silver spoon in 
his mouth must be hallmarked by silversmiths ac- 
cepted for generations; the tailor who makes his 
sailor suit as a child is named by the social law, and 
as he grows to manhood he must go to another 
fixed tailor, not being permitted the luxury of a 
choice except perhaps within a circle rigidly small, 
for it would be inconceivable that men who had not 
made for the quality all their lives could be allowed 
to make the quality's clothes; he is year by year 
waited upon by the same clerks in the same stores, 
and thereby, in Philadelphia, clerks grow old in the 
service and, chancing to see some new young face, 
one looks around to see who has at length died to 
make such infusion of new blood possible ; he has his 

386 



SOUTH OF MARKET STREET 

hair trimmed where his grandfather's hair was 
trimmed; the most typical of the barber shops 
migrated to its present quarters thirty years ago, 
one of the barbers has stood behind his chair for 
thirty-seven years, and of the other ten, the average 
term of service is fifteen years. The Philadelphian 
buys his groceries at the store where his father 
dealt, and his "licensed victualler" is the man who 
sold meat to his ancestors — or it is the son or the 
grandson of the catering class selling to the son or 
the grandson. The school to which as a boy the 
Philadelphian is sent is as fixed a matter as if it 
were of the Medes and Persians; land is bought 
through the same agencies ; money is put in the same 
banks; the Philadelphian has his clubs chosen for 
him by unbreakable usage ; the law firms of the rich 
continue to handle the cases of the same clients and 
their estates and descendants; it is the socially 
authorized lawyer who draws the will of the Phila- 
delphian, the socially authorized surgeon who uses 
a knife upon him or gently bends above him counting 
his last heart-beats, and it is the socially customary 
undertaker who tiptoes in and begins the final ar- 
rang^ements for bearing him away to the narrow 
home where he shall rest forever among others of his 
kind. 

When S. Weir Mitchell wrote ^'Hugh Wynne" he 
set forth Philadelphia. Ostensibly and intention- 
ally he wrote a novel of the city in Revolutionary 
days, but unintentionally he at the same time ex- 
pressed the continuing spirit of the city. This 

387 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

author, who died but a few years ago, was the leader 
among Philadelphia authors, from number of 
books, and acknowledged literary position. He was 
a Philadelphian of Philadelphians, a man of family, 
choosing his wife from the elect, a dweller in the 
proper part of Walnut Street, in a house with the 
proper arrangement of windows to be a notable 
house, a man of social position, of wealth, a gentle- 
man, a, bon vivant, a man who knew human nature 
and knew the world. A doctor by profession, he 
made himself the leading litterateur of Philadelphia, 
as Oliver Wendell Holmes, a doctor by profession, 
made himself the leading litterateur of Boston : each 
doing his principal literary work after passing 
middle age. Mitchell won international reputation 
as a nerve specialist ; and when, in Paris, he went to 
ask advice regarding himself from the most famous 
French specialist of the day, the Frenchman, not 
catching the name but learning that it was a matter 
of nerves and seeing only that it was an American, 
said to him courteously, that he need not have come 
to Paris but should have consulted, in such a matter. 
Doctor S. Weir Mitchell of Philadelphia. (It was 
amusing to notice, the other day, in a book on Penn- 
sylvania history and men written by a former Gov- 
ernor of the State, a slight, not to say slighting refer- 
ence to Doctor Mitchell as an ''authority on snake 
bites and nervous troubles!'* A little venom that, 
for the doctor to specialize on! After all, with all 
of Doctor Mitchell's literary and professional stand- 
ing, he did once in a while exasperate, for he was an 

388 



SOUTH OF MARKET STREET 

** arranger," and his friends used to point out slyly, 
that when he was asked to make an address, there 
was likely to be a portrait of himself available to 
hang on one side of him and a bust for the other 
side !) 

Doctor Mitchell saturated himself with Henry 
Esmond and John Ridd. He was to do for Phila- 
delphia what Thackeray would have done had Thack- 
eray been a Philadelphian ; and ^'Hugh Wynne" is a 
well-written book, a gentleman 's book ; the characters 
and motives are fairly weighed, and good manners 
are always presented on the part of those from whom 
good manners should be expected. 

And throughout, one sees that unintentionally, but 
none the less obviously, the very spirit of Philadel- 
phia is presented : you see the Philadelphia of to-day 
even more than the city of Revolutionary times, even 
though not a single connection of Philadelphia with 
the Revolution is missed ; and you are made to realize 
of what vast importance it was to the army, to Wash- 
ington, to the new nation struggling for existence, 
that Hugh Wynne, Philadelphian, gave his active 
adherence to the cause. Washington is immensely 
admired : but Hugh Wynne, telling his own story with 
gentlemanly modesty, makes it clear that, although 
he never did anything of importance, the entire Revo- 
lution was influenced profoundly by the fact of his 
being in the service. And that, after all, is Philadel- 
phian to the core — the importance of Philadelphians 
just because they are Philadelphians. And if Phila- 
delphians failed to feel this, with, like Hugh Wynne, 

389 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

gentlemanly modesty, the city would not be the 
extraordinarily delightful city that it is. 

Always, and no matter how unfair or otherwise 
it may seem, the part of Philadelphia that is its rep- 
resentative part, the part upon which other portions 
of the city model, the part which represents the city 
to the outside world, the part which gives the city 
its traditional charm and idiosyncrasies, its in- 
dividuality, its personality, its distinctive pic- 
turesqi;eness, is represented by *' South of Market 
Street.'^ 

Now, this does not mean that those who live in the 
thus designated district, or in the suburbs but af- 
filiated with that district, think of themselves as 
monopolizing the city's ability or character. For 
they most certainly do not do this, and they are alto- 
gether too well-bred and too innately modest for any 
such ideas. But they believe, and they expect you to 
believe, that their district represents the ultra-desir- 
able, and, whether it is or is not a mere fetich, the 
idea is accepted. 

Of course the idea has its absurd side, especially 
when it is realized that even "South of Market 
Street" means only a small part of that district, 
geographically. But, after all, I am dealing with 
facts and conditions as I find then. And, in essen- 
tials, so many of those who are not of the favored 
district try to follow the methods and adopt the pose 
of those who are, that it is assuredly not altogether 
absurd. 

With serried rows of houses all alike, with peace- 

390 



SOUTH OF MARKET STREET 

ful charm, and orderliness, and quiet restraint, the 
district gives ontward and visible signs of what it 
deems its inward and social grace : and in this, again, 
square miles of the city that are not south of Market 
Street try to follow the example, with the result of 
general orderliness of building, likeness of building to 
building, throughout the city. 

The fine old unpretentious homes in this district of 
Chestnut, Walnut, Locust, Spruce and Pine streets, 
are likely to have little gardens behind them, and 
there may be charming overhanging back balconies 
facing the south, and there are clambering wistarias 
and espaliered grapes ; and the houses face the street 
in unbroken rows, with the kitchen approached from 
back alleys, except where, in some places, the rows 
are broken by deep-penetrating, brick-paved, knocker- 
gatewayed, narrow paths. 

The typical Philadelphian likes to be able to trace 
his family through six generations, counting his own 
as the sixth; it is a figure fixed, in a way, by social 
demands, although four or five generations, or even 
three on occasion, may be made to pass ; three being 
absolutely requisite, as without three there could 
be no grandmothers. One of the ''first family'* 
Philadelphians was saying to me, only yesterday, and 
appreciating the humor of his own situation, that 
although he could himself go back for six generations, 
six was his limit, whereas he had just bought a dog 
that had a formally guaranteed pedigree of twenty 
generations. 

The representative people of the city practice the 

391 



THE BOOK OF PITILADELPHIA 

amenities. In their voices, their manners, their very 
gestures, they aim at a sort of set standard ; they and 
their houses and their streets are distinguished; and 
again, more or less consciously, the rest of the city 
aims at the same standards. 

The best of Philadelphia living is decorous rather 
than decorated : it has a quiet perfection of detail that 
comes only with generations of similar living. There 
is no hesitation in a hospitality that is six or seven 
generations old. It is not plain living ; distinctly not 
that: but ** plane '^ living in the sense that upward 
struggle is not necessary : the great-grandfather saw 
to that and established the plane. 

No matter how little or how much basis there is 
for their claim, those who live in the geographically 
favored region take their o^vn claim very seriously. 
As a Chicagoan would say, ''They put it across." 
Live in the wrong neighborhood, and although your 
wealth, manners, education, furniture, your house it- 
self, may be quite as good as if in the best district, 
you and your house are anathema to them. They will 
buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, but they 
will not eat with you, drink with you, nor, to com- 
plete the Shakespearean summing up, pray with you. 
Even in religion you must be in the right social circle 
and the right church. 

And all this is without conscious offense given 
or taken. And the Philadelphian simply does not 
struggle against a force, call it a prejudice if you will, 
which is too strong for any merely human being to 
attack. One might as well attack the fact of cold 

392 



SOUTH OF MARKET STREET 

weather or tlie equator. The thing to do, seems to be 
to imitate. 

Rittenhouse Square stands in the public eye as the 
representative of ''South of Market Street." Its 
atmosphere is that of dignified serenity, and at the 
same time of cheerful hving. Homes of dignity look 
out upon it, and perhaps you will notice, in particular, 
an oldish and square-fronted house of classic design, 
built of white marble, or another white marble house, 
more recently built, with little iron balconies that hold 
green box bushes. And an odd feature is, that 
although this square stands as representative of old 
Philadelphia, and although the square itself was 
planned in Penn's first planning of his city, it does 
not present old houses, as does most of the socially 
favored section. But it presents an air of perma- 
nence ; and this, in spite of the intrusion of two apart- 
ment houses ; an essentially new feature which is but 
just gaining a foothold in this city of individual 
homes. 

The sunny square that holds the sifted few is a 
cheerful place, with its rhododendrons and azalias 
and grass and trees. It is a paradise for nurses and 
children, and for that noble animal, fast vanishing 
under modern conditions, the dog. In the center is a 
stone-paved space, with a low-stone-walled pool, en- 
closed within fine balustrades. There is also a fine 
Barye lion; and, far up on the corbeille steps that 
pinnacle a narrow brown stone dwelling, a comical 
stone lion seems to have climbed and is looking 
comically down at the lion of the terrace. 

393 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

''South of Market Street" feels that the Opera is 
its own ; and this, in spite of the fact that the Opera 
House is north of Market Street, and very consid- 
erably north ! Each Opera night is a gala night for 
the ''South"; but the best of all classes and districts, 
the best of every part of the city, love music and love 
it intelligently, and at the Opera the city is seen at 
her prettiest. Between the acts all Philadelphia 
meets and greets in the lobby or behind the boxes. 
And I do not know whether it is prettier to see the 
young women, charmingly sweet, simply dressed — 
and one realizes how such a fine type of young 
womanhood grows and flourishes under the sheltering 
gaze of parents and uncles and aunts and a settled 
society; or to see the older folk, with no sign of 
doddering age, alert and intelligent, examples to the 
young of how to grow old gracefully, and treated by 
the young with a natural deference which is defer- 
ence to the higher intelligence that has come with 
age more than it is a deference to age itself. 

The Assembly is unquestionably a possession of 
"South of Market Street." It represents the acme 
of social exclusiveness and has from the first done 
so. It dates back for more than a century and a half, 
to the winter of 1748-9, and one cannot attend with- 
out the right to attend; and the right to attend has 
always been jealously guarded. A woman is at the 
top of the social ladder if she is invited by the 
managers to be one of the patronesses; there being 
three, one elderly, one of middle age, and one the 
bride of the season. And a man is at the top if he is 

394 



SOUTH OF MARKET STREET 

asked to take one of the patronesses out to supper. 
If a man who is definitely within the charmed circle 
marries a wife who is outside of it, it usually puts the 
wife inside. But a daughter, marrying a man who 
is out, merely puts herself outside. It is still remem- 
bered, that when a woman of wealth, a Miss Hillegas, 
married a jeweler, she was automatically deprived of 
her right to attend the Assembly balls ; — this happen- 
ing over a century ago ! 

Always, in this city, among those who are taken 
to be the representatives of the city, Time does not 
exist; it is a city of yesterdays quite as much as of 
to-day. It was over a century ago that a tragic politi- 
cal happening caused Edmund Randolph, of Virginia, 
to lose not only the confidence of the people but 
the personal confidence of George Washington. De- 
scendants of the Randolph family live in Philadel- 
phia; and on the wall in one of the rooms of their 
house hangs prominently a portrait, with its face to 
the wall. It is the portrait of Washington ; and this 
keeping of its face to the wall is to continue, still, the 
bitter feeling of the time of Randolph's downfall. 

To hear two ''family" folk running down the 
identity of some one of a "family" name is really 
like nothing so much as a couple of terriers worry- 
ing a bone. Back and forth go question and answer 
and comment, and all with first-name familiarity. 
**Now, Peter's father — " ''If it were the family 
branch of John, he would have to be a grandson 
of — " <'He must be one of the Harriet family. You 
know, she married — " And so on, ad infinitum, 

395 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

worrying over every clue, picking clean the bone of 
relationship : and finally, as must necessarily be the 
case where every ramification of every real family is 
known, the problem is triumphantly solved and the 
man or woman is put into the right pigeonhole. 
There is some mixing of metaphors here, but after 
you have listened, at one time or another, to a number 
of such discussions, you can't help mixing metaphors. 




396 



CHAPTEE XXVin 



A FETTDAI^ CITY 




ORE singular than any 
other fact in regard to 
Philadelphia, is it that 
this city, in which inde- 
pendence was declared, 
possesses essential char- 
acteristics of a feudal 
city. Although it was 
here that the representa- 
tives of the people an- 
nounced that all men are 
created equal, Philadelphia really believes that 
people are very unequal indeed; that they always 
have been unequal and that they are going to remain 
so. 

It is amusing to hear the familiar story of the girl 
who, visiting in England, said that *'if her father 
were English he would be a duke"; but it takes on 
a somewhat different aspect when one knows that it 
represents a very real feeling. In the Revolutionary 
period — not long ago as this city counts time! — one 
of the Whartons was so important that he was often 
referred to as ''Duke Wharton." 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

People of ** station*' are treated with an awesome- 
ness that elsewhere in the United States goes to none 
but the extremely rich. Here it is not a matter of 
riches, except in so far as most of the *' privileged 
class" are actually rich, through cumulative inherit- 
ance and the piling up through years of business 
and real-estate fortunes. But even if one of the 
class is far from rich, he is still treated with defer- 
ence. I remember noticing, in a store, that a not- 
rich member of one of the oldest families came up 
quietly and was quietly waiting his turn. But sud- 
denly and also quietly the floor-usher saw him wait- 
ing;. That one of that name should wait was in- 
conceivable ! And there was shocked urgency in the 
tone with which a clerk was summoned and told: 
*'Mr. is waiting!'* 

Now, that was rather nice after all, the man being 
poor in fortune though proud in name. But it is not 
pretty to hear, ordinarily, the hushed awe in the 
voices of such as worship when "Mr. This" or *'Mrs. 
That" is referred to. One is reminded of the in- 
dividual, somewhere described by Dickens, who 
would rather be knocked down by a man who had 
blood in him than picked up by one who hadn't. 

Here, things are because they have been ; they shall 
be because they are — or, at least, that represents the 
city's general idea. And yet, some things change; 
as in the matter of schools, which have been getting 
better and better, with more and more attention paid 
to public high schools; the idea of the city having 
largely and undemocratically been, in the past, that 

398 



A FEUDAL CITY 

children should be sent to private schools or else be 
but meagerly educated. 

A curious custom in house-renting is very general 
and is not the custom of other cities. For house- 
agents handle the rent-rolls for the owners, in a very 
English fashion. The agents may be large trust 
companies or little spider-like house-agents in little 
local offices near the properties. Many a tenant in 
alley and tenement or in house of comfort and size, 
has no idea who the owner is — or, to use a phrase 
often on Philadelphia lips, *'to what estate it be- 
longs." And there is no appeal past the agent. 

The feudal feeling, once noticed, is recognized in 
the very atmosphere of the city ; it is sensed in a host 
of things. And the feeling is kept alive and sup- 
ported by imitation. Philadelphia's intense and ad- 
mirable respect for the ancient organizations, the 
old-time clubs, benevolences, associations, is dis- 
played by the publication of numerous volumes in 
regard to them ; yet one looks in vain for the memoir- 
like quality, for the reminiscent, for the Samuel 
Eogers kind of book, for satire, for record of achieve- 
ment, for national interest. No. It is only a 
matter of which men belonged, when they entered, 
who succeeded them. Page after page, name after 
name, grandson after grandsire: — and these bound 
volumes are matters of living interest ; these lists of 
grandsires are the "Burke's Peerage" and the 
** Landed Gentry," the ** Domesday Book" and the 
**Almanach de Gotha" of Philadelphia. And be- 
tween two such books, on a shelf at one of the libra- 

399 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

ries, I noticed a large and important-looldng volume 
which I found to be a record of the last convention 
of the plumbers of the city, with pages of names, of 
members and officers past and present : and this close 
imitation is mentioned because it is typical, and be- 
cause imitation tends to the continued honoring of 
what is imitated. 

That the * * exclusives " stay by themselves and 
draw a circle about themselves, and that the poor 
stay by themselves, and the undistinguished but well- 
to-do by themselves, marks outwardly, more than 
any other single manifestation, the feudal structure 
of the city. 

On pleasant afternoons of early spring Chestnut 
and Market streets are thronged, packed, positively 
jammed with slow-moving masses of people. And 
still the two throngs do not mingle! Market Street 
remains Market and Chestnut remains Chestnut ; the 
people of one street not going to the other, each class 
naturally keeping to its ''station," yet with neither 
one class nor the other definitely formulating such 
an idea. 

Now, go just a little distance south to South Street. 
This is ''South of Market" but south with a differ- 
ence. For here is the center of the region of the 
negroes and they throng this, their main street, on 
pleasant days in early spring, as Chestnut and 
Market are thronged, and especially in the evenings. 
For long sections, for square after square, there are 
brightly lighted little shops, principally for meat 
or fruit; and so much meat is shown, such shoals 

400 



A FEUDAL CITY 

of fish, such innumerable counters piled high with 
fruit, that it seems as if all the meat and fruit in 
Philadelphia must be here. There are endless lines 
of sidewalk stalls and curb-carts. There is a curious 
prevalence of little photographing shops, appealing 
to the darky vanity. There are "beauty parlors." 
There are endless ''tonsorial parlors," with darky 
barbers shaving darkies, or freely clipping, and 
around the chairs upon the floor are circles of curly 
wool. There are no pawnbrokers, but *4oan offices." 
There are endless saloons, with constant streams of 
blackness in and out. The pool rooms at one cent 
a cue cater to an unbroken string of players. Hat 
stores are a feature, for hats are one of the weak 
spots of the dusky dandy. A few motorcars stand 
in front of the vaudeville and moving picture houses, 
and in some you will be sure to see the colored 
chauffeur waiting, the others having been driven by 
the colored owaiers themselves. At the ticket offices 
are formed massed queues of negroes. Mainly, the 
street is orderly. Mainly, the men and women are 
carefully or even flashily dressed, for this is the 
Great Black Way. 

But you never see the blacks trying to promenade 
on the streets of the whites. You never see the white 
poor on the streets of the white rich. You never see 
the privacy of the ''exclusive" streets infringed 
upon. Always and everywhere it is each class by it- 
self. 

It was because Philadelphia was a feudal city in 
Eevolutionary days, as it is to-day, that the 

401 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

Miscliianza was such a success. It could not liave 
been a success in either Boston or New York. But 
here it fitted naturedly. The home and spacious 
grounds of ' * Duke ' ' Wharton were chosen, and it was 
a revel of gorgeousness, of mediaeval gayety and 
tournaments, with slaves wearing silver collars and 
silver bracelets, with Knights of the Burning 
Mountain and Knights of the Blended Eose, with 
jewels and wine and music and dancing — and Wash- 
ington grimly waiting at Valley Forge. 

This is a city to which such things come naturally. 
And here there are still perpetuated the honors paid 
in feudal times to the ** Abbot of Unreason" and the 
''Lord of Misrule." This dates, here, back to the 
very beginning of the Colony, and ancient rhymes 
came too, and during Christmas week groups went 
about, fantastically dressed. With the Eevalution 
there were changes, and St. George and the Dragon 
became General Washington, and ancient rhymes 
vanished and such modern verses appeared as, 

"Here am I, great Washington, 
On my shoulder I carry a gun!" 

The groups of mummers increased in the city's 
congenial atmosphere. Gradually, these groups or 
companies, known as "Shooters" because in old 
days they indulged in a general firing of guns on the 
last night of the year, consolidated and increased 
their celebration, and for many years past, on the 
forenoon of New Yearns Day, they have marched 
up Broad Street, gorgeous company following 

402 



A FEUDAL CITY 

gorgeous company, with marvel of colors, with 
rivalry of expense, with thousands of dollars paid 
for a single costume with its train carried by a score 
or more of glittering pages. 

The most curious thing about this distinctly feudal 
annual demonstration, done on such an extravagant 
scale, is that the participants are mechanics, laborers, 
small shop-keepers, from parts of the city deemed 
humble parts, who emerge once a year and dazzlingly 
take possession of Broad Street. Men freely spend 
the savings of a year to make a show. Marching 
clubs are prodigal of their money. Political leaders 
and merchants of the submerged regions from which 
the mummers come are given the chance to help. 

There is nothing restrained about the colors or the 
costuming. The colors are crass and strong and there 
are myriads of ''diamonds.*' A favorite formation 
with the vying and unbelievably berigged companies 
is for a tall man, in the center, to have his head 
through an immense satin panoply, spread out curb- 
wide, and carried by brother mummers, satin-robed, 
high-ruffled, marvelous as to tawdry headgear. For 
hours the bizarre pageant goes on: the paraders 
marching or dancing, music blaring, feet tapping time : 
in all, an extraordinary survival of feudal days. 

Within a few years past, this city has shown its 
peculiar ability in the way of pageants, by two 
mighty historical ones, given, as if for intentional 
contrast, by the other extreme of society from the 
Mummers, and superbly and perfectly given, one on 
Broad Street and one in Fairmount Park. 

403 



THE BOOK OF PHILADELPHIA 

Philadelphia is really, one comes to see, an 
astonishingly delightful city, with astonishing con- 
trasts and unexpectednesses. 

It shows lovable aspects to strangers. ** Your grave, 
calm, kind, old Philadelphia," wrote Thackeray. 
''The happy, the peaceful, the elegant, the hospitable, 
and polite city of Philadelphia," wrote John Adams. 

Among the most astonishing things in regard to 
this old feudal city is that its greatest citizen was not 
a rich or highly-descended man, but the Great Com- 
moner, Benjamin Franklin; such a plain, sensible, 
unaristocratic old patron saint for an aristocratic 
old city! 

And what a stir that Great Commoner made in the 
world! After being honored in Europe as probably 
no other man without the power and title of royalty 
was ever honored, after being honored and loved by 
philosophers and dukes, and by the rich and the 
learned, and by the representatives of great nations ; 
after being a welcome guest in the homes of the 
proudest in England and in France; after leaving 
France for his final journey home, with the honors 
of a princely progress, met and welcomed along the 
road to the sea by the scholars and the lofty-titled, 
and carried, he being troubled with the gout, in the 
Queen of France's own litter, through the Queen's 
own thoughtfulness ; he crosses the Channel and holds 
a levee of a few days at Southampton, meeting his 
friends, who hurry there from London and other 
places for a last farewell. 

And there was a touching happening. Bishop 

404 



A FEUDAL CITY 

Shipley of St. Asaph's, with his wife and one of his 
daughters, Franklin's dearest friends in England, 
came down to Southampton to be with him to the 
last. The day arrived when sailing was expected in 
the morning. The Shipleys were to stay on board 
all night so that they might say a last farewell as the 
vessel departed. And so Franklin went to bed; and 
then — doubtless it was because the Bishop deemed a 
final parting too emotionally dangerous: "July 
28th. When I waked in the morning, found the com- 
pany gone, and the ship under full sail"; just those 
few grieved words. 

After a voyage of six weeks the ship entered Dela- 
ware Bay, anchored in the twilight above Newcastle, 
and next morning sailed on and brought Franklin, 
as he could still phrase it, after all his European tri- 
umphs, ' ' In full view of dear Philadelphia. ' ' 




INDEX 



— A.— 

Abbey, 155, 176 

Abington, 308 

Abington Meeting-house, 96 

Academy of the Fine Arts, 171-3, 
220 

Academy, Germantown, 302 

Academy of jMusic, 199, 285 

Acadians, 34 

Acorn Club, 210 

Adams, Abigail, 279 

Adams, John: at dinner, 112, 
275; at Mt. Pleasant, 256; 
opinion of Philadelphia, 404; 
at St. Joseph's, 35 

Aleott, Bronson, 299 

Alcott, Louisa M., 299 

Alleys, 115-7 

Andalusia, 219 

Andre, Major, 46, 86-7, 199, 247, 
248, 327 

Arch Street Burial-ground, 17 

Arnold, Benedict, 248, 249, 251- 
4, 255, 256, 258 

Art Club, 209 

Artists: 163-178; Abbey, 155, 
176; Beaux, 155, 177; Cassatt, 
177; Chase, 174, 175; Duples- 
sis, 154; Fulton, 175; Green, 
177; La Farge, 176; Leslie, 
176;Neagle, 155; Oakley, 177; 
Parrish, 177; Peale, 75, 171, 
172, 319; Pennell, 177; por- 
traits at State House, 74, 75; 
Pyle, 176; St. Gaudens, 238 
Sargent, 155, 173; Sharpies, 
75; Stephens, 177; Stuart, 
169-171, 334; Sully, 74, 175; 
Trumbull, 63-4; West, 32-3, 
56, 163-8; Whistler, 173 

Assembly, The, 394 

Atlantic City, 353 

"Autobiography," Franklin, 57, 
58, 59 



407 



— B.— 

Bache, Mrs., 46 

Bainbridge, 27 

"Bargains," 134 

Barron, 296 

Barry, 75, 271 

Bartram's Garden, 265 

Beaux, Cecilia, 155 

Beavers, 28 

Belmont mansion, 250 

"Ben Bolt," 180 

Bennett, James Gordon, 44 

Bethlehem, 373 

Biddle, Nicholas, 218, 219, 220 

Black Horse Inn, 160 

Blackwell house, 112 

Bok. Edward, 7 

Bonaparte, Joseph, 122, 337, 

341-3 
Bordentown, 337-343 
Boundary Line, Pennsylvania 

and Delaware, 349, 352 
Brandywine, 347-8 
Bristol, 332-6 
Brooks, Phillips, 7 
Bryn Mawr, 324 
Buckingham, 315 
Buchanan, James, 370 
Burlington, N. J., 332, 335, 336, 

337 
Burlington, Vt., 130 
"Busybodies," 148 
Butler, Pierce, 186, 203, 307 
Byrd, Colonel William, 104-5 

—C.— 

Ca Ira, 61 

Cadwalader house, 153 

Cape May, 353 

Carpenters' Hall, 81-92 

Carroll of Carrollton, 66 

Cassatt, Mary, 177 

Cathedral, Roman Catholic, 239 



INDEX 



Catholic, 33, 35 

Centennial, the, 243-4 

Ceracchi, 172 

Charities. 376-385 

Chase, William M., 174, 175 

Chastellux, 46 

"Chesapeake," the, 270 

Chester, 344-7 

Chestnut Street, 143, 144, 400 

Chew, Benjamin, 304 

Chew house, 2!)4. 303, 304 

C;hina, Franklin's, 45 

Christ Church: 15, 21-8; grave- 
yards of 17, 26, 27 

Churches: 14-31; Abington, 309; 
Cathedral, 239; Christ, 15, 21- 
28; Gloria Dei, 28; Holy 
Trinity, 7, 16; Holy Trinity 
(Catholic), 37; St. David's, 
329-331; St. Joseph's, 32-8; 
St. Peter's, 15-21; Swedes', 15, 
28-31, 350; Washington 
Square, 220 

City Hall, 236, 237, 238 

City Hall Square, 145, 230-232, 
235, 237 

Cleveland, foreseen by Franklin, 
57 

Cliveden, 294, 303, 304 

Clubs, 201-217, 308 

Coleman, William, 249 

College Club, 210 

Columbia, 370 

"Common Sense," 9 

"Congress," the, 270 

Congress Hall, 78. 79 

"Constellation," the, 270 

"Constitution," the. 270 

Contentment ; a trait of the city, 
129-133, 135 

Continental Congress, 84, 85, 86, 
88, 89, 90 

Contributionship, Philadelphia, 
154 

Conwell, Russell, 7 

Cooke, Jay, 6 

Cooking, 272-7 

Cooper, J. Fenimore, 192. 337 

Cornwallia, 71, 124, 264, 302, 

316, .320 
"Crisis," The, 9 



408 



Crossing of the Delaware, 315, 

310 
Cimard family, 206 
Custom House, 220 
Cutler, Manasseh, 54 

— D.— 

Dale, Commodore, grave of, 27 
Davis, Rebecca Harding, 144, 196 
Davis, Richard Harding, 118, 

196, 197 
Decatur, Commodore, 17-18, 271, 

296 
Declaration of Independence: 

date of, 76-78; hall where 

signed, 73, 74; signing of, 64; 

Trumbull's painting, 63-4; 

vrhere written, 69; reading of, 

206 
Dickens, 62, 96, 181, 189, 374, 

398 
Dormers, 140 
Drews, the, 199 
Duch^, 18, 19, 89 
Dunkers, 371 
Duplessis, 154 

— E.— 

Eating, 272-7 
English. Thomas Dunn, 180 
Ephrata, 206, 371 
"Evangeline," 34, 36, 37, 38 



-F.- 



Fairmount Park, 236, 238, 240-1, 
245, 246-258 

Family, a city of, 1-3, 69, 147, 
391 ' 

Fitch, 309-310 

Footscrapers, 113 

Forrest, Edwin, 197, 198 

Fourth of July, 76-8 

Franklin. Benjamin: his coming 
to Pliiladelphia, 5; his first 
lodging, 116-7; his first sleep, 
140; his homes, 12, 43, 44, 45, 
46; printing press, 47-51; his 
pew, 23; religion, 52; his 



INDEX 



wife, 41, 42, 58; silver and 
china, 45; his daughter, 46; 
his son William, 57-00; his 
mother-in-law, 48; insurance 
policies, 45, 50; proposed 
European tour with Washing- 
ton, 40, 41 ; as a friend maker, 
59 ; visited by William Pitt, 
52; friendship with Whitefieid, 
51, 52; with the Wests, 108; 
clever replies, 53, 65, 71, 185; 
the kite, 109-110; Duplessia 
portrait, 154; Cleveland fore- 
seen, 57; organizations founded 
by, 55, 56, 57, 205, 261, 377; 
described by Manasseh Cutler, 
54; President of Pennsylvania, 
55; "Autobiography," 57, 58, 
59; relations with France, 60- 
61; meeting Gibbon, 184; last 
return from Europe, 404, 405; 
meeting five Kings, 159; en- 
ergy in old age, 43, 54; grave 
of, 27 

Franklin Inn, 214-215 

Franklin Institute, 224 

Franklin, William, 57-60 

Franklin, William Temple, 58 

Franks, David, 249 

Franks, Isaac, 300 

Fulton, Eobert, 175, 309-311, 370 

— G.— 

Gallatin, 310 

George, Henry, 11 

George III: and Benjamin West, 

103; and Cornwallis, 316 
Germantown, 288-304; battle of, 

293-304 
Germantown Academy, 302 
Gilder, Pichard Watson, 338 
Girard College, 225-229, 379 
Girard, Stephen: his Philadel- 
phia advent, 6; buildings 
named in his honor, 12, 219, 
220; in yellow fever days, 
116; Latin and Greek, 264; 
his college and benefactions, 
379, 380; his career, 226-229 
Gloria Dei, 28 



409 



Graeme Park, 312, 313, 314 
Graft, 234 
Gratz, Kebecca, 183 
Graveyards: 16-19; Arch Street, 

17; Christ Church, 17, 26, 27; 

St. Peter's, 16, 17; Swedes', 

16, 17, 29; Woodlands, 268, 

269 
Green, Elizabeth Shippen, 177 
"Green Tree," 152-155 
Grey, General, 46, 326 
Grove house, 250 
Guatavus Adolphus, 28, 345 



-H.- 



"Hail, Columbia!" 179 
Hamilton, Alexander, and the 

Constitution, 119 
Hamilton, Judge, 23 
"Hamlet," 377 
Hancock, John, 64, 65, 68; and 

"Dorothy Q.," 247 
"Hand-in-Hand," 150-2 
Hanna, Mark, 267 
Henry, Patrick, at Carpenters' 

Hall, 90 
Hicksites, 97, 98, 106 
Holy Trinity Church, 7, 16 
Holy Trinity (Catholic), 37 
Hopkinson, Francis, 168, 338, 

339 
Hopkinson, Joseph, 179, 339 
"Hugh Wynne," 387-9 
Humphreys, Joshua, 269-271 
Hunt, Isaac, 181 
Hunt, Leigh, 181-3 
Hunting clubs, 212 
Huntington Valley Country Club, 

308 

— I.— 

Independence Pall; see State 

House 
Individuals, city of, 5-10 
Inns: Black Bear, 85; Black 

Horse, 160; Buckingham, 315; 

City Tavern, 84, 85; Crooked 

Billet, 84; Indian King, 84; 

Indian Queen, 79; Peg Mul- 



INDEX 



len's, 84: Pewter Platter, 84; 

Kobert Morris, 317; Three 

Crowns, 85 
Insurance Companies, 50, 150-5 
Insurance, Franklin's, 45, 50 
Irving, Washington, 183, 186 

— J.— 

Jabetz, Brother, 206 
James, Henry, 141, 281 
Jaudenes, 334, 355 
Jefferson, Joseph, 199 
Jpfferson, Thomas, 61, 68, 69, 

246, 292 
Joffre, General, 378 
Jordans, 4 

— K — 

Kearsley, Doctor, 23 

Keith, Governor, 59, 312, 313, 

314 
Keithites, 106 
Kemble, Charles, 185 
Kemble, Fanny, 185, 298, 306, 

307 
Kipling, 366 
Knox, General, 182, 269, 271, 

294, 295, 359 

— L — 

La Farge, John, 176 
Lafayette, almost captured, 356; 
gateway of Pennsylvania Hos- 
pital, 378; Laurens, 375; 
Napoleon, 319; at Bethlehem, 
374; at "State in vSchuylkill," 
216; joins the armv, 315 
Lancaster, 366, 367, '369 
Latrobe, Benjamin, 220, 221 
Laurens, Hojiry, 374, 375 
Lee, General Charles, 26 
Lemon Hill. 249 
Leslie, Charles, 176 
Letitia house, 124, 250; Letitia 

Street,, 124-125 
Liberty Bell, 24, 72 
Library Company, The, 56 
Library, Ridgway, 221 



Lincoln, President, 71, 233, 250 

Lititz, 372 

Logan, the Indian, 292 

Logan, James, 56, 101, 291, 292 

Logan Square, 233, 239 

Long, John Luther, 308 

Longfellow, 37, 330, 373 

Lorimer, George Horace, 7, 308 

Lowell, James Russell, 109, 190 

— M.— 

Macpherson, Captain John, 255 
Main Line, 323-4 
Mansfield, Richard, 200 
Market Street, North of, 141, 

146-7 
Market Street, South of, 141, 146 

386-396 
Markets, 30, 277 
IMarshall, Chief Justice, 304 
McClellan, General, 10 
McKcan, Thomas, 204 
McKinley, President, 266 
McLane, Captain, 143, 295 
Meade, General, 38-9 
Meeting-houses: 95, 96, 97, 98 

106-110; Abington, 90: Bir^ 

mingham, 347; Germantown, 

298'; Mennonite, 303 
Memorial Hall, 244 
Mennonites, 303, 369 
Mint, the, 223, 306 
Mirailles, 258 
Mischianza, 248, 402 
Mitchell, S. Weir, 155, 387-9 
Mobs, 281 
Moore, "Tom," 193 
Moravians, 372-5 
Morris houses. 120, 121, 299 
Morris. Robert, 0, 120, 317 
]\Tott, Lucretia. 06 
Mt. Pleasant, 248, 251, 255-8 
Mummers, 403 
Munchausen, 196 
Murray, Lindley, 164, 370 

— N.— 



410 



Naaman's, 349 
Napoleon, 319, 340 



INDEX 



Naval heroes, graves of, 17, 18, 

27, 75, 269 
Navy Yard, 270, 306 
Newcastle, 351-2 
New Hope, 315 

— O.— 

Oakley, Violet, 177 

Oaks of Abington, 96 

Octavia Hill Association, 384 

Old Swedes' Church, 15, 28-31 

Opera, the, 394 

Orchestra, Philadelphia, 285 

Orianna Street, 43, 44 

— P.— 

Pageants, 403 

Paine, Tom, 8, 10, 338 

Paoli, 325-7 

Parkway, the, 239 

Parrish, Maxfield, 177 

Peale, Charles W., 75, 171, 172, 
205, 319 

Peale, Rembrandt, 172, 205 

Pemberton, General, 10 

Penn, Admiral, 3, 4, 100 

Penn Charter School, 100 

Penn, John, 250 

Penn, William: his ancestors, 3, 
4; his family, 4, 5; naming 
his city, 2; Indian treaty, 101- 
3; land reserved for Indians, 
148; boating, 157; planning 
the squares, 230; witchcraft, 
232; love for Philadelphia, 
103 ; estimate by Colonel Byrd, 
104-5; estimate by Macaulay, 
103; Delaware River mansion, 
25 1 ; Newcastle bequest, 352 ; 
City Hall statue, 237, 238; 
lead statiie of, 378; burial 
place, 4 

Pennell, Joseph, 177 

Pennsylvania, origin of name, 2 

"Pennsylvania Dutch," 366-9 

Pennsylvania Hospital, 376-8 

Philadelphia Club, 202-5 

Philosophical Society, 55, 205, 
206 



411 



Plastic Club, 214 
Poe, 191-3 
Politeness, 281, 282 
Poor Richard Club, 214 
Porter, Admiral, 269 
Potter: the Bishops, 8 
Potters' Field, 234, 235 
Powel house, 112 
Priestley, Doctor, 53 
Princeton, 318, 319 
Pronunciations, local, 138, 139 
Punishments, 136, 232, 233 
Pyle, Howard, 176 

-Q.- 
Quakers, 4, 82, 93-110, 239, 279, 

287 
Quoin d'Or, 214 

— R.— 

Rachel, the actress, 198 

Read house, 351 

Read, Tliomas Buchanan, 180 

Reid, Captain Mayne, 192 

Revere, Paul, 224 

Reynolds, General, statue of, 237 

Ridgw-ay Library, 221, 222, 223 

Rising Sim, 289, 290 

Rittenhouse Square, 393 

Rochambeau, 235 

Rodney, Cajsar, 66-68, 329, 349 

Rogers, Samuel, 181 

Rogers, the sculptor, 237 

Romantic business, 150-162 

Roosevelt, 266 

Ross, Betsey, 23, 125-7 

Ross, Charlie, 301 

Rush, Doctor Benjamin, 116, 195, 

221, 272 
Rush mansion, 222, 223 
Rush, Mrs., 221-223 
Rush, William, 172, 236, 241, 242 

— S.— 

St. David's, 329-331 
St. Gaudens, 238 
St. Joseph's, 32-8 
St. Peter's, 15-21 



INDEX 



Sargent, John S., 155, 173 

Schools, 398 

Scott, Sir Walter, 62, 63, 183 

Scrapple, 273, 277 

Seckel pears, 29 

Shackaraaxon, 102 

Sharplos, James, 75 

"Sheridan's Ride," 179 

Shipley, Bishop, 405 

Shippen, Peggy, 248, 251-4 

Shooters, the, 403 

Silver, old: of Christ Church, 25; 

Franklin's, 45; by Syng, 73 
Silversmiths, early, 73, 278 
Sketch Chib, 214 
Slavery, Jeflferson on, 68 
Smith,' Kate, 11 
Smith, Provost, 123, 339 
Smith, Richard, 243 
Smith, Sydney, 164 
Solitary," Order of the, 371 
South Street, 400 
Spanish Ministers, 258, 277, 

333-5 
Speech, characteristic, 128, 129, 

138, 139 
State House : "Independence 

Hall": 62-79; architect of, 23; 

Lincoln at, 71 
"State in Schuylkill," 215-7 
Stenton, 291-3 
Stephens, Alice Barber, 177 
Sterne, Laurence, 314 
Stock Exchange, the old, 156 
Stockton, Frank R., 268 
"Street of Little Clubs," 213 
Street Signs, 139 
Stuart, Gilbert, 169-171, 296-8, 

334 
Sully, 74, 175 

Supreme Court building, 78 
Sutter, 372 
Swanson, 29 

Swedes, 28, 29, 233, 345, 349 
Sweetbriar mansion, 250 
Syng, the silversmith, 73 

— T.— 

Tammany, 289, 290 
Taylor, Bayard, 180, 330 



412 



Temple University, 6 

Thackeray, 133, 186-9, 404 

llieaters, 198, 199 

Tilghman, Tench, 266 

Treaty Elm, 101-2 

Trenton, 317, 319, 320 

Trumbull, 63-4 

Truxtim, Commodore, grave of, 

27 
Twyford, 67 

— U.— 

Union League, 211 
"United States," the, 270 
University Club, 20S 
University of Pennsylvania, 
260-5 

— V— 

Valley Forge, 354-365 
Vining, Mary, 328 

— W.— 

Walnut Street Theater, 198 
Washington, George: his Phila- 
delphia home, 119-120; bells 
rung for, 24: at church, 25; 
his pews, 19, 23; costumes, 25, 
79; and Yrujo, 334; at Powel 
house, 112; setting watch, 118; 
at theater, 199: the American 
flag, 126; on York Road, 314; 
the Crossing, 315; at Brandy- 
wine, 347, 348; near Chester, 
347-8; Valley Forge head- 
quarters, 300: at Stenton, 293; 
home in Germantown, 299-301; 
visiting Navy Yard, 270; pro- 
posed European tour, 40-1; re- 
tiring from Presidency, 79; 
Farewell Address, 78; por- 
traits of, bv the Peales, 205, 
319, by Stuart, 169-171, by 
Sharpies, 75, at Princeton, 
319; German statue of in Fair- 
mount, 239 
Washington Square, 220, 233, 234 
Wayne, Anthony, 235, 272, 295, 



INDEX 



321-4, 325-9, 360 ; burial place, 

329-331 
Welsh names, 324 
West, Benjamin, 32-3, 56, 163-8, 

376 
Whistler, 173 
White, Stanford, 12, 220 
Whitefield, 51, 52, 309 
Whitman, Walt, 144, 194 
W^iittier, John G,, 95, 103-4 
Wifi^gin, Kate Douglas, 11 
Willow Grove, 309 
Wilmington, 349-351 
Wilson, grandfather of Woodrow 

Wilson, 44 
Wilson, James, 22 
Wilson, the ornithologist, 29 
Wissahickon, 243, 299 



Wistar, Doctor Caspar, 207; his 

house, 208 
Wistar Party, 206-8 
Wistaria, 208 

Wister, Owen, 186, 207, 298, 307 
Wister house, 298 
Witchcraft, 232 
Woodford mansion, 248, 289 
Woodlands, 268, 209 
Wright, Patience, 337 
Wrought iron, 112, 113, 114 

— Y— 

Yellow Fever, 116 
"Yellow Mansion," 121 
York, 367, 370 
York Road, 305-315 
Yrujo, 334 



413 



i 



